Du mb a r t o n Oa k s

Washington, D.C.
An Oasis of Scholarship 3
Denys Sutton
The Building of Dumbarton Oaks 13
Giles Constable
Ancient American Gods and Their Living Impersonators 19
George Kubler
Four Maya Reliefs 31
Mary Ellen Miller
The Byzantine Collection 39
Cyril Mango
The Saint Peter Icon of Dumbarton Oaks 53
Kurt Weitzmann
A Fte of Flowers: 59
Women Artists Contribution to Botanical Illustration
Agnes Mongan
The Gardens 69
Diane Kostial McGuire
Notes on Contributors 81
Apollo Magazine Ltd., 1984, ISSN 0003-6536
Originally published in APOLLO, Vol. CXIX, No. 266, April 1984
Du mb a r t o n Oa k s
Edited by Denys Sutton
Although Henry James spent most of his life in
Europe, he understood much about his compatriots;
those, at any rate, who belonged to the upper strata
of society and especially those who went to
Europe. His gift for perceiving the strain of inno-
cence that could be detected in many Americans
when they were abroad is clear, but he was no less
aware of their frequent search for an aesthetic ideal.
Needless to say some collectors in the United
States, like those in other countries, went in for
ostentatious interiors and showed little true con-
cern for art. Yet many American collectors had
remarkable f lair and bought splendid pieces: C. L.
Freer, Mrs. J. L. Gardner, Henry Walters and Jules
Bache, to name only some of the most celebrated,
were endowed with unusual taste. The next genera-
tion produced people such as Duncan Phillips and
Robert and Mildred Bliss. The Blisses were the
creators of Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.,
which came into the public eye in 1944 when the
preliminary discussions leading up to the founda-
tion of the United Nations were held there.
The Blisses were of a type that has more or less
vanishedthe civilized amateurand represented
American patrician culture at its f inest. Those who
had the privilege, it was nothing less, of being
shown Dumbarton Oaks in the old days by Mr.
and Mrs. Bliss with the puckish Director, John S.
Thacher, in attendance, will cherish the memory of
a golden phase in American life. The taste of the
Blisses, Maecenases of distinction, was for the rare
and unusual: the Music Room (Fig. 3) is an
epitome of High Culture, with its rich gold thread
tapestry, remarkable early Italian and Northern
pictures, a Riemenschnieder f igure, a radiant El
Greco, a marvellous Degas and one or two superb
examples of Chinese and Egyptian art (Figs. 410).
Nowadays many museums have become
Lunaparks, often invaded by unruly children whose
teachers are unable, or unwilling, to control them.
This is not the case at Dumbarton Oaks, where the
house (of which the history is traced by the
Director, Giles Constable, in this issue) is an oasis of
culture where the inanimate beauty of the objects
within is complemented by the growing beauty of
the gardens without. These were created by Mrs.
Bliss with the help of Beatrix Farrand, a niece of
Edith Wharton and an expert in garden design. Mrs.
Bliss also established an important garden library.
Robert Woods Bliss (Fig. 1) was the sort of
cosmopolitan and educated American who appears
in the novels of Henry James and Edith Wharton.
Most of his life was spent in the grand world of
international diplomacy. After leaving Harvard
(where he studied History), he entered the public
service in 1900. His f irst post was in the off ice of
the Civil Governor of Puerto Rico to whom he
was appointed secretary. Later he was en poste in
Venice, St. Petersburg, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Paris
and The Hague. He was also American Ambassador
to Sweden and the Argentine. He worked in the
State Department in Washington and although
retiring at his own request in 1933, he became a
consultant in 1942. When Second Secretary at the
American Embassy in St. Petersburg he was
presented to the Czarina and was in Russia during
the Revolution of 1905.
Blisss father, William H. Bliss, was the United
States Attorney in St. Louis and also had railway
interests. Left a widower, he married the remarkable
Anna Dorinda Blaksley (18511935), also from St.
Louis, whose lineage gave her membership in the
Colonial Dames and the Daughters of the Ameri-
can Revolution. She had been sent to Paris to
f inish at Miss de Vinas well known school and
then travelled round Europe with a chaperone, Miss
Emily Mason, known as the Florence Nightingale
of the South.
Soon after returning to St. Louis, Anna Blaksley
married her f irst husband, Demus Barnes, a wid-
De n y s S u t t o n
An Oasis of Scholarship
4
1
Robert Woods Bliss
(18751962)
2
Mrs. Robert Woods
Bliss (18791969) by
Albert Steiner, 1908
5
ower, whose daughter, Cora, was older than she.
The new Mrs. Barnes was devoted to her step-
daughter after whose premature death she built in
her memory a special mausoleum at Woodland,
New York. Her own husband died too, but not
before they had had a daughter, Mildred. Barnes,
who had interests in Fletchers Castoria Corpora-
tion, left his widow an exceedingly wealthy woman.
It was an instance of the close ties linking the
Barneses and the Blisses that Mildred Barnes (Fig.
2) should have married her step brother, the
handsome Robert Bliss.
Mrs. Bliss Senior was clearly a forceful person-
ality, with a pronounced taste for good music.
Although before the First World War she and her
second husband spent most of the year in Manhat-
tan, she decided to build a mansion in Montecito at
Santa Barbara, California. The result was Casa
Dorinda, which was erected during the War, a
handsome example of the American eclectic style
with strong Churrigueresque features. One
attraction of this vast residence is the grand music
room where such famous artists as Paderewski and
Heifetz would perform.
The older Mrs. Blisss love of music was
inherited by her daughter and stepson, who often
gave concerts at Dumbarton Oaks, which they
bought and renovated in 1920. The Blisses were
friends of Nadia Boulanger and commissioned
Stravinsky to compose his celebrated Dumbarton
Oaks concerto (1938) in honour of their Golden
Wedding. The tradition of music-making at
Dumbarton Oaks continued after it had ceased to
be a private home: it had been given by the Blisses
to Harvard University in 1940.
As yet the development of the Blisses love of
works of art has not been examined in any detail.
Their long stay in Paris, where Bliss served at the
American Embassy from 1912 to 1920, was of
paramount importance for shaping their taste. In
1918, for instance, Mrs. Bliss acquired Degass La
Rptition de Chant (Fig. 10) at the artists studio sale.
The Blisses moved in the smart upper class intellec-
tual society of the time, which is depicted in the
memoirs of Mrs. Wharton with whom Mrs. Bliss
did not get on.
A determining inf luence on the Blisses was
Mrs. Blisss friendship with one of the most
intriguing Americans of his timeRoyall Tyler
(18841953), whom she had known since 1902,
and with whom she corresponded until his death.
Tyler, whose ancestor was the f irst Chief Justice of
Vermont and the f irst American playwright, and
whose grandmother was of Slavonic origin, went to
Harrow and then to New College, Oxford, but left
after four terms. He studied in Saragossa and
became a close friend of the Rector, Miguel de
Unamuno. A polymath and a brilliant linguist, Tyler
was commissioned by Grant Richards to write a
book on Spain (1909). This remarkable volume is
one of the f irst publications in English to pay
tribute to El Greco. Tyler eloped with the beautiful
Mrs. Richards, born Contessa Elisina Palamidessi de
Castelvecchio, the descendant of a son of Louis
Napoleon, King of Holland. Royall Tyler was then
employed by the British Public Record Off ice as
Editor of the Calendar of the Spanish State Papers.
The Tylers had established their home in Paris;
it was there that Tyler f irst made Bliss aware of the
beauties of PreColumbian art, taking him to the
small shop of Joseph Brummer in the Boulevard
Raspail where he bought his f irst piecean Olmec
f igure. Blisss response to Pre-Columbian art was
analogous to that of many of the Paris avant-garde
to Negro sculpture.
Bliss later confessed that on the day he saw the
Olmec f igure the collectors microbe took root...in
very fertile soil. Although he looked for pieces in
Latin America he never found anything worthwhile
there: his collection was formed of items bought in
Europe and the United States. He had no interest in
the anthropological or historical aspects of Pre-
Columbian art; he only acquired items that ap-
pealed to him as works of art. The result is a
collection which is one of the most aesthetically
pleasing of its kind in existence. It was on view at
the National Gallery, Washington, D.C. for many
years and, after the owners death, it was installed in
a special wing, designed by Philip Johnson, at
Dumbarton Oaks.
Dumbarton Oaks, however, is best known for
its celebrated collection of Byzantine art and its
Antioch mosaics which were excavated by a
Princeton University team. The Blisses had devel-
oped their taste for Byzantine art during their time
in Paris, largely owing to the inf luence of Tyler. He
6
3
The Music Room, facing
East
7
4
Maddona and Child by
Tilman Riemenschneider
(14601531). Wood, height
95
.
25 cms. Acc. no. H. 24.4
5
Head of Bodhisattva,
Chinese, Tang period, 618
906. Black stone, height 43
cms. Acc. no. H. 25.5
8
6
Cat, Egyptian, Late
Dynastic Period. Bronze on
rose granite socle, c. 35
.
5 cm.
Acc. no. H. 21.1
7
Landscape by Claude
Lorrain (160082), 1663.
Sepia, black chalk and wash,
26
.
2 37
.
8 cm. 1935. Acc.
No. H. 36.48. An outstand-
ing example of Claudes late
style, this composition is
related to several others of
about the same time
9
8
The Prince of Wicked-
ness, Flemish, thirteenth
century. Tapestry, 4
.
65 3
.
5
m. Acc. No. H. 35.15
10
9
The Visitation by El
Greco (15411614). Oil on
canvas, 97
.
5 72 cm. Acc.
no. H. 36.18. From the
Church of Santa Clarel,
Diamel (Ciudad Real)
10
La Repetition de Chant
by Edgar Degas (1834
1917), c. 1873. Oil on canvas,
81 65 cm. Acc. no. H.
18.2. Bought by Mrs. Bliss at
the Degas Sale of 1918
11
had fallen in love with Byzantine art when his
mother and stepfather had taken him to St. Marks
as a lad; later his friendship with Unamuno further
fostered his love of Byzantium. He was to publish
in 1926 a small book on the subject with Hayford
Peirce, with whom he later wrote two sections of a
f ive volume Lart Byzantin that was interrupted by
the Second World War; he also played a major part
in organizing the Byzantine exhibition of 1931 at
the Muse des Arts Decoratifs. Tyler was an all-
round man with a f ine eye (he owned a magnif i-
cent Byzantine chalice) and worked as an econo-
mist and off icial at the League of Nations; his
excellent life of Charles V was published posthu-
mously in 1956. During the First World War Royall
Tyler served in the American Intelligence in Paris
with Hayford Peirce. Their set included Eric
Maclagan, head of the British Information Service,
Mrs. Wharton and Berenson, who said of Tyler that
he was perfectly genuine and very lovable, a real
scholar and a man of taste.
A taste for Byzantine art was quite the thing in
Paris: Mrs. Wharton, who worked with Mrs. Tyler
during the war, was keen on it; she would see the
Byzantine historian Gustave Schlumberger who was
the ami intime of the Comtesse de Coss-Brissac
and in her novel The Glimpse of the Moon (1922), the
American writer introduces a character, Professor
Darchivio, who had been invited to give an after-
dinner talk on the differences between Sasanian and
Byzantine motifs in Carolingian art.
Two considerations inspired the Blisses in their
enthusiasm for Byzantine art. They were intrigued
by the beauty of its f inest objects, a number of
which they acquired, and by its arcane qualities:
here was a world of art that was then known only
to an lite. Robert Bliss was also intrigued by the
intellectual problems involved in the study of this
art, which then, as now, is notoriously diff icult to
assess. Huntington Cairns observed in a tribute to
Bliss that he was fascinated by a civilization that
had carried on the secular imperial system of the
Roman Empire until the capture of Constantinople by the
Turks in 1453, and which had preserved the learning of the
West. The preservation and transmission of knowledge was
the greatest function which, at that time, could have been
performed. This the Byzantines accomplished with ardent
precision and humility. He saw that here was a f ield of great
richness which Western students had largely neglected.
Byzantium was luxurious, commercial, legally minded,
theological, touched with science, and motivated by a
powerful art impulse. It was an area of history that de-
manded exploration if medieval civilization were to be fully
understood.
Not everyone would agree with that interpre-
tation of Byzantine art, nor with the view of
Royall Tylor and Peirce that it was essentially the art
of the Imperial Court; nevertheless the works at
Dumbarton Oaks reveal a sensibility towards costly
materials that is found in Byzantine art at its f inest.
In any event, the Blisses felt that this was an art that
required further study. As Bliss wrote in a piece on
Dumbarton Oaks; A Dream becomes Reality:
There was need in this country, we thought, of a
quiet place where the advanced student and scholar
could withdraw, the one to mellow and develop, the
other to write the result of a lifes study. This noble
belief, one shared by Bernard Berenson at I Tatti,
was an offspring of the ethos of the High Culture
of the American Renaissance of the years between
1890 and 1914. Both Dumbarton Oaks and I Tatti
are sanctuaries for those who (we hope) seek truth
in a disinterested fashion.
Gi l e s Co n s ta b l e
The Building of Dumbarton Oaks
The main house at Dumbarton Oaks, with its
various additions, presents a conspectus of Ameri-
can architectural styles ranging from early nine-
teenth-century Federal through Victorian to neo-
Georgian eclectic and modern in the twentieth
century (Fig. 1). Each shift in style and ownership
was accompanied by a change in name. The site, at
the top of a steep slope rising from the Potomac
River, was known in the eighteenth century as the
Rock of Dumbarton owing to a fancied resem-
blance to the Rock of Dumbarton in Scotland.
During the f irst half of the nineteenth century,
when Classicism and Romanticism alternately
prevailed, the house was called Acrolophus, and
sometimes the Grove or Oakly. It was renamed
Monterey during the war with Mexico, and The
Oaks in about 1860, in its Victorian phase. The
present name of Dumbarton Oaks, given after the
property was purchased by Mr. and Mrs. Robert
Woods Bliss in 1920, thus combines two elements
from its previous history.
The f irst house was built on top of the hill,
facing due south, in about 1800. Two stories high,
with f ive bays and built of brick, it resembled other
great houses of the early Federal period, according
to Colket and Vander Poel in their unpublished
history of Dumbarton Oaks.
1
Among its distinctive
features, now lost, were the receding central bay,
with a rounded window above the front door, and
the parapet, with sections of balusters, along the
roof-line, concealing the roof from the ground (Fig.
2). Other features, still visible in the main block of
the present house, are the twelve-pane windows,
with stone lintels and keystones above and counter-
sunk panels in the brick between them, and, inside
the building, the central hall running through the
house, with rooms opening on either side. The
short eastern wing of the original house set back
from the main faade also survives. Some distance
beyond this wing the elegant pavilion known as the
Orangery, which still exists essentially in its original
form and is discussed elsewhere in this issue, was
built probably between 1805 and 1812.
The house was totally remodelled in the mid-
nineteenth century by Edward Linthicum, who
enlarged it on every side (Fig. 3). He f irst extended
the east wing towards the Orangery, and back
beyond the original north side of the house,
making an ell, and later he added a west wing, with
a porte-cochre at the end. In the centre of the
back he added a two-storey bay-window, sur-
mounted by a hexagonal tower, shaped like a
cupola, rising some distance above the roof-line.
2
On top he added, under a mansard roof (said to be
one of the earliest mansard roofs in Washington), a
third f loor, which was later transformed into a small
theatre, the scene of popular social entertainments
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Under the enlarged cornice a row of heavy
brackets was added, further changing the original
character of the building. The disguise was com-
pleted by the addition of a portico over the front
door, with a glazed-in balcony above, and by
porchestwo-storey on the west wing, and one-
storey on the east wingdecorated with wrought
iron, in the southern style. The result was thor-
oughly nineteenth-century, and it would have
1
Cited from the typescript at Dumbarton Oaks, part II, p.
20. See also Walter M. Whitehill, Dumbarton Oaks: The
History of a Georgetown House and Garden, 18001966, p. 15.
All students of Dumbarton Oaks are indebted to these
works, from which much of the information in this article is
derived, supplemented by photographs in the Dumbarton
Oaks archives and in memoirs such as John S. White, To Keep
the Declaration, 1978.
2
The date of this addition is uncertain, but its angular
shape, with three f lat sides, and curved topped windows, as
well as the tower, mark it as Victorian, as does an illustration
in White, op. cit., p. 175, showing it open on the interior,
forming a gallery.
14
2
The Ori gi nal House,
with a wooden porch
added. The earliest
known photograph, c.
1860
1
Aeri al Vi ew c. 1970.
A: Pre-Columbian
Gallery (1963), B: Music
Room (1929), C: East
Wing (c. 1860), D:
Orangery (1805/12), E:
Main House (c. 1800), F:
West Wing (c. 1870) and
extensions (19219), G:
Garden Library (1963),
H: Byzantine Gallery
(1940)
C
A B
H
G
F E D
15
3
Dumbarton Oaks in the
second half of the
nineteenth century. The
f lagstaff and wrought-iron
on top of the tower are
visible beyond the near
chimney. The Orangery,
with the hip roof added by
Edward Linthicum, can be
seen on the left
4
Dumbarton Oaks in the
1920s
16
required a sharp observer to discern the Federal
building within.
The third and most recent transformation,
undertaken by Mr. and Mrs. Bliss in the 1920s, to
some extent restored the original appearance by
removing many of the nineteenth-century accre-
tions, especially the portico over the front door, and
the porches. The faade of the central block
recovered some of its f latness, with an inset front
door protected by a slightly protruding porch, with
double columns on either side. The lintels with
their keystones and the countersunk panels became
more visually prominent. The windows on the
ground f loor, and some others, were elongated and
adorned with small wrought-iron balconies. Most
striking was the appearance of the roof, where the
heavy Victorian brackets under the cornices were
replaced by a lighter neo-classic design and the
double-dormer windows with peaked roofs were
increased from three to f ive in number on the
central block, changed into rectangular windows
with curved and peaked pediments, and connected
by a low parapet which conceals some of the roof
and gives a semblance of the horizontal roof line of
the Federal house. A balustrade was also added
around the roof of the Orangery, concealing the
hip added in the nineteenth century to improve the
ventilation, and the visible roof was covered in
curved red tiles, giving it a somewhat Mediterra-
nean appearance, presumably in order to harmonize
with the design of the swimming pool.
3
On the
north faade, the hexagonal tower was removed and
the bay window was rounded in the eighteenth-
century style, and a door and stairs made, giving
access to the North Vista. The roof of the east wing
was raised, and the west wing was extended,
forming an ell parallel to that on the east, and
topped with an artif icial chimney for the sake of
symmetry.
The interior of the house was entirely remod-
elled, except for the central hall which survived
throughout its history. As Whitehill says:
In the new dispensation, the room to the left of
the central hall [formerly the parlor] became the
dining-room, with pantries and kitchen in the
[new] west wing. The large room to the right
[formerly the library] was subdivided into coat and
dressing rooms on either side of a passage that led
to an exquisitely proportioned oval room with
recessed bookcases and eighteenth-century French
furniture. The east wing on the front [formerly a
sitting room and dining room] became a less formal
library for Mr. Bliss. The space in the ell to the rear
[formerly the kitchen and servants hall] was
converted into a drawing room [to which a large
bay window on the east, overlooking the Green
Garden, was added in the late 1920s]. In a long
gallery at the back of the house a pair of graceful
staircases were introduced.
4
The extension of the west wing was the f irst
of f ive major additions made to the house between
1920 and 1963. The second was the Music Room,
completed in 1929, which opens off the west wing,
down a f light of marble steps. Like the gardens, it
incorporates elements, some authentic and some
imitated, from France and Italy between the
sixteenth and eighteenth centuries but is none the
less a distinctively American expression of the
cultivated eclectic taste of the 1920s. It was the
scene in 1944 of the Dumbarton Oaks Conversa-
tions, when the foundations of the United Nations
were laid, and also of the f irst performance of
Stravinskys Dumbarton Oaks concerto and other
notable pieces of music. It is now used for concerts
and lectures and occasional receptions and scholarly
meetings. The third addition was the Byzantine
Court, completed in 1940, immediately before
Dumbarton Oaks was conveyed to Harvard
University. It consists of two parallel pavilions, one
housing the Byzantine Collection and the other,
off ices and the main corridor, connected to the
Music Room on the east and by a glazed corridor
to the west, parallel to the street. In the centre is a
courtyard with a lawn, with a large mosaic from
Antioch set into it. The two f inal additions were
the wings for Mr. Blisss Pre-Columbian Collection
and Mrs. Blisss garden library, both f inished in
1963, though an ambitious plan was developed in
the mid-70s for building a new library under the
North Vista and several plans for extending the
3
In the latest repairs, these red tiles have been replaced by
slates, as in the earlier versions of the Orangery.
4
Whitehill, p. 63. The insertions are based on the f loor-
plan in White, p. 172 and on old photographs.
17
exhibition space by covering the Byzantine court-
yard have been proposed.
In looking at the house today, the most promi-
nent features on the south and east are the neo-
Georgian faade and the Orangery, both reminis-
cent of the original Federal building, and the
twentieth-century additions to the north and west,
especially the Music Room and the Pre-Columbian
gallery, which is the single most outstanding
building at Dumbarton Oaks (Fig. 5). The only
visible signs, both disguised, of the Victorian
changes are the mansard roof and the bay on the
north faade, but just as the Federal house underlay
5
Technology and Conservation, VI.3, Fall 1981, p. 23.
5
Exterior of the Pre-
Columbian Gallery,
designed by Philip Johnson
and f inished in 1963
the Victorian mansion, so the Victorian changes
inf luence the present character of Dumbarton
Oaks.
The principal effort in recent years has been
devoted to renovation and upkeep. Like many f irst-
class houses built almost without regard for cost in
the early twentieth century, Dumbarton Oaks has
suffered from what has been called Good Building
Menopause. Unlike cheap buildings, which need
constant upkeep, f irst-class buildings will lull you
into a pleasant state of complacency until, at some
point between ages sixty and eighty, very substantial
sums will have to be found to buy another f ifty
carefree years.
5
The early owners of Acrolophos
fought a constant battle to maintain the house. The
re-buildings in the mid-nineteenth century and
early twentieth century each gave it a new lease of
life. The recent repairs have given it yet another
lease, preserving for the future its distinctive
combination of old and new architectural styles.
Ge o r g e Ku b l e r
Ancient American Gods and Their Living Impersonators
Robert Woods Bliss began collecting ancient
American art in 1912 when he purchased in Paris
an Olmec jade f igurine. During the succeeding
years, while he and Mrs. Bliss were forming their
Byzantine collection and establishing Dumbarton
Oaks, Mr. Bliss continued to acquire exceptional
examples of Pre-Columbian art, and he collected
selectively but intensively throughout his life.
Between 1947 and 1962 his Pre-Columbian
collection was on display at the National Gallery of
Art. Eager that the Indian art of Latin America be
permanently represented in the nations capital, Mr.
Bliss gave this collection to Dumbarton Oaks in
1962 and asked Philip Johnson to design a gallery
that would enhance as well as house the collection.
With this in mind, the Pre-Columbian gallery was
built in 1963 of eight circular glass pavilions that, in
combination with transparent and translucent cases,
allow the objects to be enveloped in a natural
environment with trees.
At a time when most ancient American art was
displayed as material culture in museums of
anthropology and natural history, Mr. Bliss collected
Pre-Columbian objects for their aesthetic value. He
did not intend to acquire representative samples of
all the arts of this hemisphere before Columbus, but
selected small-scale works of the highest creativity,
expression, and skill. The ancient art of
Mesoamericaof the Olmec, Teotihuacan, Maya,
Classic Veracruz, Mixteca-Puebla, and Aztec
culturesforms the bulk of the collection, but the
products in gold and semi-precious stone from
Central America are also included, as are a broad
range of works from Andean South America. The
scholarly study of the collection draws equally on
the humanities and the social sciences, in books,
articles, and conferences arising from the work of
the Fellows of the programme in Pre-Columbian
Studies directed by Elizabeth Benson from 1966
and Elizabeth Boone since 1980.
The collection grows slowly within the
original def inition. Some specialists have debated
whether a few pieces in it are Pre-Columbian or
modern works. These unpublished observations are
considered in this article. The writer remains in
favourable suspense of judgement about the
sculpture Woman in Childbirth recently considered to
be modern, although accepted by almost all scholars
since 1898 without challenge. The negative argu-
ments are about modern tools and iconographic
inconsistencies, but their authors eschew expres-
sional and ritual considerations that are positive.
PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN (fragment of jadeite
statuette). Olmec style. (Figs. 1, 2)
The Olmec origin has never been questioned
since its appearance on the art market in 1944 and
f irst publication.
1
It was then identif ied without
signature as Olmec.
Depending on lighting and photographic angle
the fragment was f irst thought to be male and later
female. Photographs taken from below with top
right lighting and left side turned forward, suggest a
singer in performance, lifting her face from turning
shoulders (Fig. 1). If posed frontally and lighted
from both sides, the fragment is strikingly mascu-
line, and as if listening passively, with the head sunk
between shoulders (Fig. 2). Lighting is not alone
responsible for the difference. The fractures at
shoulders and torso leave the original posture in
doubt. Was the f igure seated or standing, looking up
or ahead, making sounds or silent? Other Olmec
1
D Y N [Mexico City], VI, 1944, after p. 24, top left,
then given as of unknown provenance or provenience,
but in a private collection. S. K. Lothrop catalogued it
as of a man (Robert Woods Bliss Collection, Pre-
Columbian Art, 1957, no. 9).
20
1 and 2
Portrait of a woman,
Olmec style, Mexico, before
500 b.c. Jadeite, height 6.6
cm. Acquired 1948. This
fragment of a statuette has
variously been interpreted as
a female singer or a pensive
male
All the illustrations in
this article, except f igures 4
and 5, are of pieces in the
Dumbarton Oaks Collec-
tion.
3
Alligator-man pendant
Darien style, Colombia, post
third century a.d.? Cast and
soldered gold, height 12.8
cm, width 9.9 cm. Acquired
1953. With such wide
diffusion, stable typology
and surprising antiquity, the
alligator deity could be
among the major cult
f igures of ancient America
21
ALLIGATOR-MAN PENDANT. Darien style.
(Fig. 3)
The problem here is unique in ancient
America. It is about all the alleged deities for whom
neither mythologies nor rituals were collected in
meaningful records. Over two dozen such breast
pendants exist. Most are in Colombian collections
with provenances from the northwestern Darien
region adjoining Panama. One was in the Well of
Sacrif ice at Chichen Itza and another at Venado
Beach in the Canal Zone of Panama. One radiocar-
bon date at a.d. 227 plus or minus sixty years pins
down this site which has no evidence of long
occupation.
5
With such wide diffusion, stable
typology, and surprising antiquity, the alligator
deity in cast gold could be among the major cult
f igures of ancient America.
The symbolic structure is that of a frontal
human presented symmetrically with f lattened legs
and joined feet; arms holding rods of gold to the
mouth; winglike f inials with scrolls (from fronds?)
f lanking a face panel; and two hemispherical bosses
in the headdress above nose and eyes. The spiralled
scrolls and the braided wire across the face are cast
from wax threads and soldered to the frame. These
techniques were in use from Colombia and Panama
to Mexico.
6
If crocodile be taken as the dominant represen-
tation, then only the bosses and the f inials can be
read as caiman (the American genus of crocodilians).
Neither is sure, unless the bosses are the f loating
eyes of the submerged lagarto de Indias or alligator
(the American crocodile). If the winglike or
fernlike f inials are of the alligator, they might be
benef icent jaws spreading instead of crushing, but
we have no text for comparison. The rods to the
mouth show fernlike scrolls (Prez de Barradas No.
statuettes portraying agitated motions allow the
more dynamic standing and twisting posture to be
considered as not only possible but originally
intended.
2
Turning from posture to expression leads
to another uncertainty. Is the woman singing or
sobbing? Her dilated nostrils and furrowed brow,
carved in translucent surfaces, look like skin wet
with tears caused by emotion.
Such visual effects raise the question of the
relationship between the makers of clay f igurines
and the sculptors of stone without metal tools.
Users of stone tools early achieved effects of skin
textures, gaze, muscular interplay, expressional folds
and emotional intensity before 900 b.c. by working
at the gigantic scale of the huge basalt boulders
used for the famous colossal heads. Their scale, by
this argument, was chosen to magnify the f ield of
the work. As at Stonehenge the dimensions are
large because the tools were large celts and adzes.
Their furrows became smaller only as smaller,
harder instruments were fashioned. By this hypoth-
esis about early macrotechnics,
3
small carvings
follow colossal heads, as lenses followed gnomons,
or stamped coins followed megalithic money.
Enfolded within the history of Olmec sculp-
ture is the contrast recurring throughout
Mesoamerican habits of expressiona contrast
between the representation of life as it appears to
sight, and the mythological system that wove
together the intricate ciphers of the imagined life
of the gods. A diminutive jade fragment and the
colossal heads are to life and religion, as language
and art are to forms of life in the context of recent
aesthetic theory.
4
2
The jadeite Olmec gladiator, ibid., plate IV, f ig. 10
and p. 234.
3
G. Kubler, Commentary, Contributions of the
University of California Archaeological Research Facility, no.
11, 1971, pp. 1623.
4
Richard Wollheim, commenting on Wittgensteins
aesthetics, in Art and its Objects: an Introduction to
Aesthetics, 1968, on the sense that language and art are
forms of life.
5
J. Prez de Barradas, Orfebrera colombiana. Estilos
Quimbaya y otros, 2 vols., 196566; I, f igs. 5556; II,
lminas 6381.
6
D. Easby, Ancient American Goldsmiths, Natural
History, LXV, 1956, p. 404.
22
4
Couple Embracing,
Codex Dresdensis, fol.
23c, Maya style, Yucatan,
Mexico, post a.d. 1200. Ink
and wash on sized f ig bark
paper. Schsische
Landesbibliotek, Dresden.
Compare with pottery
f igurine in Plate III. The old
man is Itzamna in his human
sun-god aspect
5
Deity in Parturition,
Codex Borbonicus, fol.
13, Aztec style, Valley of
Mexico, early sixteenth
century. Ink and washes on
sized f ig bark paper.
Bibliothque de lAssemble
Nationale, Paris. Compare
with sculpture in Plate II.
The deity, Tlazolteotl, is
giving birth to a child
already clothed in the livery
of the goddess
23
351, Fig. 48), or fruit-like pods (ibid., No. 6420, Fig.
75; No. 3494, Fig. 66). It might even be that the
god (or his impersonator) is eating a plant. If,
however, the wings are avian, their scrolls should be
feathers. We have no explanation other than
alligator for the grinning teeth in some (ibid., No.
3064, Fig. 54; No. 6031, Fig. 79, etc.), which might
be taken for teeth, dripping water as scrolls.
One specimen f inally has double-spouted,
bridge-handled kettles for the bosses (ibid., No.
6031, Fig. 79), and alligator dentures ingesting
water plants in a caparison where the human
wearer of the paraphernalia carries alligator jaws on
his shoulders, eats water plants, and balances kettles
on his head in a ritual danceimpersonating a
deity for whom we still have no accepted text or
name.
COUPLE EMBRACING. Jaina style. (Plate III)
Commonly identif ied
7
as a scene of
lovemaking, this moulded f igurine with modelled
heads was reportedly found in a mortuary jar on
Jaina Island. At least ten other pottery versions of
the same subject exist, proving the distribution of
the theme throughout Maya history and geogra-
phy.
8
Pendergast interprets the scene as representing
the moon goddess (Ixchel) and an old god labelled
N (in the Schellhas typology).
9
More is known from Maya mythology, in the
Chilam Balam books of Chumayel, Tizimin, and
Mani, in Lpez de Cogolludo, and in the Kekchi-
Mopan legends,
10
reporting the Maya belief that
7
Lothrop, op. cit., no. 127, p. 255; E. P. Benson, From
the Island of Jaina: A Maya Figurine, Bulletin of the
Detroit Institute of Fine Arts, LVII, 1979, no. 3, pp. 95
103.
8
J. E. S. Thompson, Excavations at San Jos, 1939, p.
155, f ig. 92n from Burial 11 (before a.d. 850). David
M. Pendergast, The Old Man and the Moon,
Rotunda, XIV, 1981/2, no. 4, pp. 712.
9
P. Schellhas, Representation of Maya Deities of the
Maya Manuscripts, Papers, Peabody Museum
(Harvard), IV, 190410, pp. 147.
10
Thompson, The Moon Goddess in Middle
America, Contributions to American Anthropology and
History, V, 1939, pp. 12773.
the moon and the sun, being the f irst pair to
copulate, were together the patrons of human
reproduction. One myth of the Kekchi cycle,
reported from the Guatemalan highlands by G. B.
Gordon, tells of the moon as a girl continually
following the sun: she sometimes nearly catches up
with him and they go down in the west almost
together.
11
The old man was thought by Eric Thompson
to be Itzamna in his human sun-god aspect, as
shown in the Dresden Codex (23c, Fig. 4). In the
Kekchi-Mopan cycle of Belize, the deerhead hat of
the old man in the Dumbarton Oaks f igurine is
described: deer, willingly or unwillingly, aided the
sun in his efforts to win the moon. The stuffed
deerskin gives him his introduction to the moon, a
deer restores the moon for him to full womanhood,
and a deer, by lending him his skin to hide under,
enables him to reach his wife....
12
The same
deerhead-bowknot headdress is worn by a youthful
male portrayed in a f igurine from Jaina Island, who
may be the morning aspect, rather than the old
evening one.
13
The Bliss f igurine alone among its group
shows the hand of high art: withered age and ample
youth support one another in equal embrace, glance
and gesture, veiled and restrained in a lifting rhythm
of reciprocal shapes in their sunset conjunction
every moon at waning crescent.
14
WOMAN IN CHILDBIRTH. Aztec. (Plate II)
As with many Aztec sculptural studies of
natural forms and processes, no iconographic
attributes permit naming the work as portraying a
god.
15
Other sculptures also portray plants, animals
11
G. B. Gordon, Guatemala Myths, The Museum
Journal (Philadelphia), VI, 1915, no. 3, pp. 116121.
12
Benson, op. cit., pp. 1001; Thompson, ibid. and
Commentary on the Dresden Codex, 1972, p. 60.
13
A. Emmerich, Gods and Men, 1967, f ig. 42.
14
F. G. Lounsbury, Maya Numeration, Computation,
and Calendrical Astronomy, Dictionary of Scientific
Biography, 15, 1978, pp. 7746.
15
H. B. Nicholson, Religion in Pre-Hispanic Central
Mexico, Handbook of Middle American Indians, X, 1971,
pp. 4202.
24
Plate I
Rabbit Impersonator
and Eagle Knight, Aztec
style. Cempoala (Veracruz),
Mexico, f ifteenth century
a.d. Jadeite, height 18.1 cm,
width 9.15 cm. Acquired
1947. In Metztitlan myth
the rabbit is a symbol of
night and the moon,
sheltering a bird man who is
symbol of the sun and
daytime
Plate II
Woman in Childbirth,
Aztec style, Valley of
Mexico, post a.d. 1450.
Aplite (a f ine-grained
granite of quartz and
feldspar) with inclusions of
garnet, height 20.2 cm,
width 22 cm. Acquired
1947. Tlazolteotl was most
prominent among some
twenty deities who received
worship in childbirth
Plate III
Couple Embracing, Jaina
style, Yucatan, Mexico,
before a.d. 700. Moulded
and modelled f igurine with
blue paint, height 25.6 cm,
width 13.5 cm. Acquired
1954. In Maya mythology
the moon and the sun, being
the f irst pair to copulate,
were together believed to be
the patrons of human
reproduction
25
sion. None of it, technical or stylistic, is published.
But the thoughts of Esther Pasztory on Aztec
masterpieces in 1976 justify suspending judgement
until decisive evidence appears. She writes that
small size is admissible (p. 379), and that at this late
date, about 1490, in Tenochtitlan the quality is a
function of the creation of a new formal and
iconographic image drawing freely on a variety of
visual sources.
18
Dr. Pasztory adds in a recent letter
(21 May, 1983), How can I quarrel with your
refutation of my opinions . . . when you quote my
own words? I still f ind a hard-edged quality and a
slickness in the [Dumbarton Oaks Tlazolteotl]
sculpture that disturbs me. Thus the modern
specialists, whether in anthropology or history of
art, operate as would computers for retrieval from a
data base, on which a variety of desired models may
be arranged. The modelling is limited by the data
base.
Whether the Dumbarton Oaks sculpture was
made in Mexico in the 1490s, or in Paris in the
1880s does not affect its quality as a work of high
art made with superior knowledge of the period
and place. It may now be considered as a piece of
ancient sculpture perhaps partly re-worked in
recent times with modern drills (until more is
known).
19
RABBIT IMPERSONATOR AND EAGLE
KNIGHT. Aztec. (Plate I, Fig. 6)
Colossal in being twice as tall as the human
crouching between its legs, the seated and shelter-
ing person wears rabbit attributes in a long-eared
head and rabbit paws. Both humans are in animal
costumes: the small one with hands and arms on his
chest wears a round-eyed bird helmet (parrot?
eagle?). If he were to stand up he would be as high
and people in physical fullness as sacrif ices worthy
to continue the endless cycle of vital exchange in
the universe. Human sacrif ice nourished the gods
who were thereby enabled to replenish the earth
with life again each year.
16
If we believe our eyes the woman is in labour,
but if we believe what has been written about her,
she is among some twenty deities who received
worship in childbirth. Most prominent was
Tlazolteotl, goddess of carnal love, also known by
other names, to whose priests sinners confessed.
The sculpture was drilled with many suspension
holes on ears, feet, chin, and on the body and
carved hair, for aff ixing attributes that might be
changed as needed. Such alterations may have
conveyed different names, as with the mannequins
of Catholic saints.
E.-T. Hamy, who was a doctor of medicine in
Paris, wrote of the statue in 1898 that it and a scene
in Codex Borbonicus (Fig. 5), (folio 13) explained
each other, and that the newborn hands in the
manuscript were shown as ready to seize the
interlocking loops, symbolic of dualit cratrice. The
phrase was taken from the commentary on Codex
Borbonicus by Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, who
wrote before Hamy of it, the creative duality, as
present and presiding during parturition, and of the
neonate as wearing the livery of the goddess
herself .
17
Hamy and Paso both knew the sculpture,
which was then in the collection of the geologist,
A. Damour, in Paris.
The antiquity of the Dumbarton Oaks piece
was never questioned until the 1960s, when some
archaeological and art historical opinions combined
in the view that the drilling technique was modern.
These investigations still being inconclusive, the
evidence of inconsistency in style is under discus-
16
G. Kubler, The Cycle of Life and Death in
Metropolitan Aztec Sculpture, Gazette des Beaux-Arts,
XXIII, 1943, pp. 25768.
17
E.-T. Hamy, Note sur une statuette mexicaine en
wernerite reprsentant la desse lxcuina, Journal de la
Socit des Amricanistes, III, 1906, pp. 15.
Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, Descriptin histrica y
exposicin del cdice pictrico de los antiguos nahuas que se
conserva en la Bibliotec de la Cmara de Diputados de
Paris (antiguo Palais Bourbon), 1898, p. 74.
18
E. Pasztory, Masterpieces in Pre-Columbian Art,
Actes [42d-International Congress of Americanists], VII,
1979, pp. 3889.
19
Felipe Solis Olguin reports having seen stone
fragments of a similar sculpture in the storerooms of
the Museo Nacional de Antropologia e Historia. He
believes the Dumbarton Oaks piece to be of Aztec
date.
26
6
Rabbit impersonator
and Eagle Knight, rear
view of Plate I
7
Face of a young man
with smoking mirror
emblems, Aztec style, Valley
of Mexico, c. 1507. Stone,
mottled grey, height 18
.
5
cm, width 16
.
5 cm.
Acquired 1948. This stone
portrait head represents the
severed head of a human
sacrif ice to the god
Tezcatlipoca, whose name
means smoking mirror
8
Rear view of Figure 7
27
nized in Tenochtitlan as the severed head of a
human sacrif ice to the god Tezcatlipoca, whose
name means smoking mirror. Carved inside the face
is a calendar date (2 Reed) signifying the day name
of Tezcatlipoca or the year 1507, when a new cycle
of f ifty-two years began with relighting the f ires
extinguished at the end of the preceding period.
The sacrif ice was chosen each year from
among a group of prisoners of war, as the most
perfect to enact the role of the god. The ceremony
ended with his decapitation. The head was displayed
on a large rack as a skull perforated twice for
suspension from one of many poles. A portrait
likeness was also made in stone to commemorate
his appearance. Sahagns informants said he was
chosen for perfection, as being not corpulent and
without defects or scars; smooth of f lesh (like a
tomato), not broad-headed nor square, not bald,
neither f lat nor wide nor arched of nose, not thick-
lipped, and of well arrayed teeth.
22
Traditions of portraiture were rare and widely
separated in ancient America. Great differences of
period also kept artists in ignorance of others. For
instance, Olmec and Maya portraiture in stone were
one prolonged focus in eastern Mesoamerica,
enduring 2,000 years. But Aztec stone portraiture
arose separately, about 600 years after the end of
Maya portrait images. Mochica ruler portraits on
pottery vessels are another focus on the central
Andean coast, lasting only a few centuries before
a.d. 800. Yet no good evidence links Maya and
Andean portraiture, although they were coeval.
These parallel passages in separate civilizations
without contact resist diffusional analysis. Another
approach would be to search for differences more
than resemblances in morphology and etiology. This
use of double images, more like a stereogram than a
magnif ication, might also be ideogrammetric rather
than iconographic, in relation to comparative
studies of differentiation.
as the seated rabbit. If the rabbit person rose to his
full height he would tower twice as high as bird
man.
20
Said by its owner, when it was shown in
1940 at the Fogg Museum, to have been found in
Cempoala near Veracruz, the piece was acquired by
Mr. Bliss in 1947.
This imagery has been connected by Walter
Krickeberg with a sixteenth-century myth recorded
in 1575 among the people of Metztitlan in eastern
Hidalgo.
21
The deity of pulque (maguey cactus
beer) who represented all vegetation in its annual
cycle of dying and reviving, lives in the moon, also
waxing and waning, in whose spots the people were
accustomed to see a rabbit, thrown there by the
gods, to keep the moon darker than the sun.
Rabbit, however, was also the symbol of pulque as a
calendar day named 2 Rabbit.
The myth reported from Metztitlan tells of the
renewal of life in death, and renewal of day in each
night. The rabbit would be a symbol of night and
the moon, sheltering a bird man who is a symbol of
the sun and daytime. A remote connexion with the
Kekchi myth of sun and moon may be suspected
(see p. 242).
FACE OF A YOUNG MAN. Aztec. (Figs. 7, 8)
Less than life-size, a stone portrait head,
agreeable in proportion, with images of smoking
mirrors on both temples, would have been recog-
20
A. S. Leopold (Wildlife of Mexico, 1972, pp. 34461)
illustrates many rabbit species all seated on hind legs
folding forward, never back. E. Pasztory, Aztec Art,
1982, pp. 1712, notes that the rabbit f igure is seated
with its arms raised in the death-goddess posture. The
rabbits skull-and-bones belt supports this association.
A similar rabbit person appears carved on an alabaster
vessel in he storerooms of the Museo Nacional (16
cm. W.).
21
Gabriel de Chvez, Relacin de la provincia de
Metztitlan [1579], Boletin del Museo Nacional de
Arqueologia e Historia, epoca 4, 2, entrega 5, Jan.Feb.
1924, pp. 109120 cited by Walter Krickeberg,
Felsbilder Mexikos, 1969, pp. 1002. See also Elizabeth
H. Boone, The Macuilxochitl and Ometochtli Deity
Clusters in the Codex Magliabechiano, Masters thesis,
1974, University of Texas, Austin.
22
Fray Bernardino de Sahagns Aztec informants, in
Florentine Codex, translated by A. O. Anderson and
Charles Dibble, II, 1951, pp. 645 (paraphrased),
recorded before 1585. Similar sacrif ice was made of
an impersonator of the war god, Huitzilopochtli, in
another month (ibid., p. 73).
28
Phrased more generally, to work with n
expressions all different as to conf iguration, yet of
the same idea (whether integral to the time and
place, or interpretative and later) is comparative in
higher degree than a linear or diffusional study of
isolated traits devoid of context. In effect, the idea
of diffusion produces mirages that may be reduced
by the methods of morphology and semiology to
more substantial f indings.
COILED RATTLESNAKE. Aztec. (Fig. 9)
FIRE SERPENT (XIUHCOATL). Aztec.
(Figs. 10, 11)
The contexts of the two sculptures interlock:
the rattlesnake (Crotalus) is portrayed accurately to
suggest an enhanced vitality greater than that of
nature,
23
while the Fire serpent signif ies the dry
season as well as divine power in the daily descent
of the sun in the sky.
24
In the sixteenth century Sahagn described
such f ire-serpent ceremonies in his encyclopedic
study of native Mexican life.
25
These rituals enacted
the daily descent of the sun at sunset and annually
from summer to winter solstices. In Tenochtitlan,
Xiuhcoatl and Quetzalcoatl as regents of dry and
wet seasons were serpents similar but opposite.
26
The tribal god of the Aztec peoples, called
Huitzilopochtli, appeared in the person of his priest
clad as a Xiuhcoatl serpent, who ran down from the
top of a pyramidal platform on f ire like a pin-
ewood torch, with a tongue made of red arara
feathers and a long tail of paper. While he de-
23
Crotalus: rattles of more than 12 joints are rare, but
one having 21 is known. J. P. Moore, Encyclopedia
Americana, 1953, 23, p. 228. The caudal rattle of dry,
horny epidermal rings is loosely f itted, and formed
when the skin is sloughed three or four times each
year.
24
H. B. Nicholson, op. cit., pp. 41214.
25
Arid Hvidtfeldt, Teotl and *Ixiptlatli, 1958, pp. 131
2.
26
G. Kubler, Serpent and Atlantean Columns:
Symbols of Maya-Toltec Polity, Journal of the Society of
Architectural Historians, XLII, 1982, no. 2, pp. 1123.
scended his tongue f lickered as a red snake, and
the Xiuhcoatl costume was thrown into a bowl of
sacrif ice where it burned.
27
These coiled serpents, from the same civiliza-
tion and century, show interdependent domains of
nature and mythology. The torpid f lattened spiral of
lethal energy is zoologically plausible, but the other
timeless mythological expression invokes a
numinous and protean being, whose existence
depends on constantly renewed human sacrif ices in
a relationship where mankind was the eucharist.
27
A. M. Tozzer, Landas Relacion, Papers, Peabody
Museum (Harvard), XVIII, 1941, p. 162, n. 848. The
segmentation of the Dumbarton Oaks Xiuhcoatl is
nearly identical with that of the Calendar Stone (H.
Beyer, Calendario Azteca 1921, reissued in Mxico
Antiguo, X, 1965, pp. 135256). Beyers f ig. 208 may be
a less damaged pendant to the Dumbarton Oaks piece.
Beyer does not mention its location. A stone body
section of Xiuhcoatl in the Museo Nacional store-
room shows four segments beginning at the tail, in
which the dots increase by two in each section: 9, 11,
13, 15. . . . The serpent scales are the same as in the
Dumbarton Oaks segments, but in a form suggesting
that the Xiuhcoatl segments on the rim of the
Calendar Stone are halves of one serpent seen in both
prof iles, right and left, with each segment containing a
f lame symbol instead of serpent scales (Beyer, f igs.
208212).
29
9
Rattlesnake, Aztec style,
Valley of Mexico, post a.d.
1450. Rhyolite porphyry,
height 18
.
3 cm, width 60
.
6
cm. Acquired 1946. The
coiled rattlesnake is
connected with f ire-serpent
ceremonies and with rituals
enacting the daily descent of
the sun at sunset and
annually from summer to
winter solstices
10
Fire serpent
(Xiuhcoatl), Aztec style,
Valley of Mexico, c. 1507
a.d. Quartz-diorite, height
43
.
4 cm, width 45
.
4 cm.
Acquired 1940. The Fire
serpent signif ies the dry
season as well as divine
power in the daily descent
of the sun in the sky
11
Fire serpent, view of
underside of Figure 10. The date
shown carved on the base
(1507) marks the end of the
f ifty-two-year cycle with
knotted rope
Ma r y E l l e n Mi l l e r
Four Maya Reliefs
About twenty years ago, Dumbarton Oaks
acquired four Maya relief panels.
1
Like most such
carved Maya stones of the Classic period (a.d. 300
900), these reliefs depict rulers of independent
centres in the Maya lowlands. The associated
hieroglyphic inscriptions record historical data,
although mythic information is often included as
well.
2
Stone carvings of the Classic Maya are
usually freestanding limestone stelae, but in the
western Maya region, along the Usumacinta River
and west to Palenque, carved panels similar to
Dumbarton Oaks 14 (Figs. 1, 2, 4 and 6) were often
set directly into architecture, as both structural and
decorative elements. Despite the absence of a
documented provenance for three of the four
panels, text, style, and architectural positioning all
argue for a western Maya origin for the Dumbarton
Oaks carvings.
Both text and formal elements of D.O. Panel 1
suggest a provenance within a short radius of the
important Usumacinta site of Piedras Negras. As
1
Michael D. Coe and Elizabeth P. Benson published the
f irst three panels in 1966, Three Maya Relief Panels at
Dumbarton Oaks, Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeol-
ogy, No. 2 and Mary Ellen Miller and David S. Stuart
published the fourth, Dumbarton Oaks Relief Panel 4,
Estudios de Cultura Maya, XIII, 1981, 197204. D.O. 1, 2, and
4 were never seen in situ, but the Lacanha panel (D.O. 3)
was recorded by Wolfgang Cordan at that site (which he
labelled Kuna), Geheimnis im Urwald, 1955.
2
The single, standing Maya f igure was labelled the
Classic motif by Tatiana Proskouriakoff, A Study of
Classic Maya Sculpture, Carnegie Institution of
Washington Publication 593, 1950. Proskouriakoff
later determined that the f igures depicted were
historical rulers of independent polities and that the
associated hieroglyphs recorded historical information,
Historical Implications of a Pattern of Dates at
Piedras Negras, Guatemala, American Antiquity, 25:4,
1960, 454475.
Coe and Benson have pointed out, Lintel 5, Piedras
Negras, and Lintel 1 from nearby El Cayo, both
resemble D.O. 1 in composition. The uncarved
portion of D.O. 1 has been sawn off, but the
dimensions of the sculptured area (65 63.5 cm)
are very similar to those of the El Cayo panel (68
67.5 cm). Similar Piedras Negras monuments are
substantially larger.
3
Although such panels are
usually called lintels, archaeological evidence from
Piedras Negras and Bonampak now suggests that
many such small panels, including Lintels 5 and 7
of Piedras Negras, were exterior panels designed to
abut staircases.
4
The Dumbarton Oaks panel shows a single
f igure within a stepped niche on a ground line
slightly higher than the glyphic frame, which
suggests that the f igure stands within architecture.
Structure 39 at Yaxchilan has doorways of similar
shape, and so our f igure may be standing in such a
structure, completely framed by glyphs.
5
The text of D.O. 1 records the events in the
life of a ruler who owed fealty to Piedras Negras,
for the local rulers name is connected by a state-
ment of relationship to that of an individual who
uses the Piedras Negras emblem glyph throughout
3
Lintel 5, for instance, measures 120 158 m, with
only a small plain margin.
4
How such panels were positioned can best be seen
in Tatiana Proskouriakoff s reconstruction drawing of
Piedras Negras Structure K-5 1st, An Album of Maya
Architecture, 1946.
5
See Teobert Maler, Researches in the Central
Portion of the Usumatsintla Valley: Report of
Explorations for the Museum, 18981900, Memoirs of
the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, 11:2, 1903,
Plate XLIII. Less standing architecture is preserved at
Piedras Negras and El Cayo than at Yaxchilan, so any
buildings there with such doorways may have col-
lapsed.
32
1
Carved wall panel (D.O.
1), probably from El Cayo
Chiapas, Mexico. Limestone,
height 65 cm. A standing
warrior is depicted within a
niche which may represent
Late Classic architecture of
the Usumacinta region
Figures 15 are dated to the
eighth century of The Late
Classic Maya period, A.D.
600900
33
the text. Given the proximity of El Cayo to Piedras
Negras, it is plausible that the subsidiary ruler of
the D.O. panel held sway at that site.
Unfortunately, the erosion of the lengthy text
allows for little more than a sketch of our f igures
life.
6
A distinctive element of all names in the text,
including our protagonist, his father, and the Piedras
Negras ruler, is the turtle carapace, recorded at Cla,
7
C2b, F1b, E2b, and throughout the text. The
glyphic record includes an anniversary (recorded at
F2) of the completion of three years in off ice of
the Piedras Negras ruler in a.d. 689, and seven years
later, the seating (H2a-b) of our protagonist in an
off ice typical of secondary lords rather than of
major rulers. Our individual lived into his dotage,
and he probably died at the age of 83 ( J2a-13b),
three years after he had been succeeded in off ice
( J4). D.O. 1 is thus a memorial, and the protagonist
is remembered as a warrior, bearing the spear and
f lexible shield used in battle.
Dumbarton Oaks 2 (Fig. 2) must also come from
a secondary site, because although a Palenque ruler
is depicted, the panel could not have come from the
site of Palenque itself. The reason this panel may
have been set at some distance from Palenque will
shortly become apparent.
This panel was probably f lanked by side panels
which are now missing. Both the text and the
f igures of the panel are incomplete, and the stone
shows saw marks. Large interior wall panels pre-
dominate at Palenque, and this panel may have been
set within a small enclosure inside a temple cham-
ber, as are the Cross Group panels of that site.
Captions identify the two seated individuals as Lady
Ahpo Hel and Lord Shield Pacal; the text itself
names Lord Kan-Xul as the protagonist.
Lord Shield Pacal was the f irst great ruler of
Palenque. During his 68-year reign (he acceded as a
boy of twelve in a.d. 615), a monumental architec-
tural programme was begun, and long glyphic
records were made on limestone tablets, document-
ing both the real and mythic activity of the ruling
family. He was succeeded by a son, Chan Bahlum,
who ruled from a.d. 683 to 702. A second son,
Kan-Xul, then acceded to power, and it is this ruler
who is the central f igure on D.O. 2.
8
Late in Kan-
Xuls life, Palenque engaged in warfare with Tonin,
some sixty kilometers away. Kan-Xul was appar-
ently taken prisoner, for he is depicted as a captive
at Tonin.
9
This single Tonin monument is unlike
others of that site, resembling instead the Palenque
monuments, especially in pose and prof ile. Monu-
ments celebrating victory often resemble the
sculpture of the conquered site, which suggests that
reparations included artistic labour. For all we know,
Kan-Xul himself may have designed the record of
his own demise. Later, on D.O. 2, he is shown after
death, in the guise of the Maya deity known as
G1.
10
The shell diadem, shell earpiece axe, and
knotted pectoral are all characteristic of G1.
As Peter Mathews has recently shown, the
Palenque lineage was thrown into chaos after the
death of Kan-Xul, and dynastic instability marked
6
Coe and Benson made the f irst studies of these
texts. For their analysis, see Coe and Benson 1966.
7
Maya hieroglyphs are read in columns, by pairs of
two, from top to bottom. Columns are given letters
and rows are assigned numbers. Many texts begin with
what is known as an Initial Series, a record of all days
elapsed since the beginning of time, a mythical date in
the fourth milennium b.c. A correlation constant
allows Maya dates to be converted to Julian dates, and
these are given along with Maya dates in the text. The
date 9.18.10.0.0, for instance, notes that zero days, zero
months of twenty days (for this is a vigesimal system),
10 years (each composed of 360 days for computing
purposes), eighteen blocks of twenty computing years,
and nine periods of four hundred computing years
have elapsed since the beginning of time. The standard
Goodman-Martinez-Thompson correlation constant
f ixes this date as occurring in a.d. 800.
8
As outlined by Peter Mathews and Linda Schele in
The Lords of Palenquethe Glyphic Evidence, in
Primera Mesa Redona de Palenque, Part I, ed. Merle
Greene Robertson, 1974, pp. 6475.
9
His name is clearly shown emblazoned on the
thigh in the drawing of Monument 122 of Tonin by
Ian Graham and identif ied by Peter Mathews,
reproduced in Pierre Becquelin and Claude F. Baudez,
Tonin, une cit maya du Chiapas (Mexique), III, 1982,
f ig. 168.
10
Linda Schele, The Xibalba Shuff le, Paper read at
the Princeton University Conference on Maya Vase
Painting, Princeton, New Jersey, November 1980.
34
2
An important Palenque
ruler, Lord Kan-Xul
(D.O. 2). Limestone, height
167 cm. His reign com-
menced in A.D. 702.
Depicted posthumously in
the guise of a Maya deity, he
stands between his seated
mother, Lady Ahpo Hel
(left) and his father (Lord
Shield Pacal)
3
Drawing of the relief
in Figure 2 by Linda
Schele
35
several generations.
11
It is likely that political
circumstances precluded the erection of this
posthumous memorial within the heart of
Palenque.
Although D.O. 2 is a very important panel, it
also shows signs of haste and lack of f inish in its
execution. The section of the panel below the crack
line has been crudely carved: the feet, hands, and
textile designs of the two parents seem to have
been only roughed out. The entire ground surface
of the stone shows the sculptors marks, and the
buttery, smooth surface typical of Palenque carvings
was not achieved. In technique, this panel most
resembles that celebrating the accession of Chac-
Zutz, a possible usurper of the same era.
12
The ruins of Lacanha have received little
systematic study, probably because of their proxim-
ity to the more famous site of Bonampak.
13
It may
be incorrect to consider these two places distinct,
however, for these two sites appear to have been
ruled by a single family, who in turn maintained
close ties with Yaxchilan, 26 kilometres to the
northeast. Bonampak and Lacanha lie on opposite
sides of the Lacanha River, perhaps to control
traff ic. These upper reaches of the Lacanha were
fertile ground for artistic invention, for it was here
that stone sculpture with many f igures f irst ap-
peared in Early Classic times,
14
and no surviving
programme matches the complexity and beauty of
the Bonampak murals, painted at the end of Classic
times, c. a.d. 790800.
In keeping with the Bonampak tradition, the
skill and beauty of the Lacanha panel D.O. 3 (Fig. 4)
surpasses the other Maya monuments at
Dumbarton Oaks. A single f igure rests gracefully on
a representation of personif ied stone. The right leg
is sharply foreshortened, and the line created by the
extended left leg leads the viewers eye to the face
of the f igure and then to the beginning of the text
at upper left. The seated f igure bears a double-
headed serpent bar in his arms, and with his left
hand he chucks the bearded monster under the
chin. In contrast to most Maya lords, but like many
others from Lacanha and Bonampak, he displays
facial hair, and like his descendant on Stela 1, his eye
has been drilled.
15
Among his names and titles is the expression
Knotted-eye Jaguar at C4, as scholars now refer to
him. Mathews has shown him to be the father of
the more famous ruler of the era of the paintings,
and his own parentage is included from D6 to J4,
thus establishing several generations of rulers.
16
We
probably see the ruler in formal garb appropriate to
a portrait commemorating the closing of an era: his
clothes are simple but elegant, his posture calm but
regal. According to the text, Knotted-eye Jaguar had
already been installed on 9.15.11.17.3, or a.d. 743,
into the same off ice that is named on Dumbarton
Oaks 1, possibly a lesser position than ruler. Despite
the absence of references to Yaxchilan on thison
monument, it is possible that Bonampak and
Lacanha held a subsidiary position to that city.
Although this panel has been labelled a lintel, any
doorway it spanned would have been wider than
those usually seen in the region. Like Dumbarton
Oaks 1 and 2, the Lacanha panel was probably set
either into an interior wall or against an exterior
abutment.
Dumbarton Oaks 4 (Fig. 6) is in poor condition,
having been broken in antiquity and then sawn in
modern times. The remaining pieces were set in
cement, and it is hard to determine whether the
fragments were part of a wall panel or a freestand-
ing stela.
Unfortunately, much of the face and headdress
of the f igure have been lost. In his left hand he
11
Peter Mathews, Palenques Mid-life Crisis, Paper
read at the Quinta Mesa Redonda de Palenque, June
1983.
12
The Tablet of the Slaves can be seen in Westheim,
Ruz et al., Prehispanic Mexican Art, 1972, f igs. 148 and
150.
13
See, for example, Frans Blom, La Selva Lacandona,
1957.
14
The earliest example of multifugural Maya carving
on a single surface of stone is the so-called Po panel,
now in a private collection in the United States. Early
sculptures from Caracol, Belize, also show multif igural
compositions.
15
The best illustrations of the Bonampak stelae are in
Raul Pavn Abreu, Bonampak en la escultura, 1962.
16
Peter Mathews, Notes on the Dynastic Sequence
of Bonampak, Part I, in Third Palenque Round Table,
1978, Part 2, 1980, pp. 6073.
36
5
Drawing of the
Lacanha wall panel in
Figure 4 by David S. Stuart
4
Lacanha wall panel
(D.O. 3). Limestone, height
70 cm. This panel dipicts a
Lacanha-Bonampak lord
celebrating the Maya period
ending in A.D. 746. He is
named as Knotted-eye
Jaguar and, like his
successor, Lord Chaan-muan
of Bonampak, he sports a
goatee and moustache. He
has bound his hair with
small beads, and appears to
wear a nosebead as well
6
Carved wall panel (?).
Limestone, height 151
.
5 cm.
Probably from Tabasco or
Chiapas, Mexico, A.D. 800.
This monument suffered
both in antiquity and
modern times. In his right
hand the f igure holds the
strap of a shield, displaying
the clenched hand of the
ruler
37
holds a short serpent bar; in the right, he grasps the
strap of a shield, showing the viewer the clenched
hand of the ruler. Unlike the other three
Dumbarton Oaks panels, the glyphic text makes no
reference to persons or places known from other
sources. The text gives us a date, 9.18.10.0.0 (a.d.
800), late in Classic Maya chronology, and names
the ruler (A3A4) and a woman related to him,
either a wife or mother (A5B6). Based on its date,
style, and workmanship, the piece can be attributed
to the region of Tabasco or Chiapas lying between
Tenosique and Palenque.
The four Maya panels at Dumbarton Oaks
represent a good cross-section of sculpture from the
western Maya region during Late Classic times.
Different aspects of rulership are recorded: D.O. 1
shows a posthumous warrior, framed by architec-
tural space; D.O. 2 represents the apotheosis of a
past lord; the Lacanha panel (D.O. 3) shows a
contemporary lord, celebrating the passage of his
reign. D.O. 4 is a late monument, executed during
an era when many sites no longer erected stone
monuments. The increasing poverty of expression
during the ninth century is augmented by the poor
preservation of this monument.
Cy r i l Ma n g o
The Byzantine Collection
A public collection or museum devoted largely
to objects of the Early Christian and Byzantine
periods is something of a rarity. Next to the
Dumbarton Oaks Collection, one can think only of
the Byzantine Museum in Athens, in which the
holdings, however, are to a considerable extent
post-Byzantine, containing, as they do, Greek
religious and folk art down to about the year 1800.
Why are there only two such institutions in the
whole world? Not because Byzantine art has been
neglected; on the contrary, it has been sought out
and assiduously studied for the past hundred years
and more. The reason is rather that available
Byzantine objects of museum quality are few and
far between. The heritage of Byzantine art is, in the
main, irremovable: it is made up of paintings and
mosaics decorating the walls of churches and of
heavy pieces of architectural sculpture in marble.
Has the rest simply perished? Undoubtedly, most of
it has been destroyed in the ceaseless wars and
invasions that make up the annals of the Byzantine
Empireburnt, melted down and looted by Huns,
Slavs, Arabs, Bulgars, Crusaders and Turks. The
residue is small and we cannot always assume that it
is representative of what originally existed. The
only nearly complete series is that of Byzantine
coins, of which Dumbarton Oaks possesses prob-
ably the most extensive group in the world.
It cannot be claimed that the Dumbarton Oaks
Collection represents a conscious attempt at a
systematic coverage of Byzantine artifacts. It is
rather a ref lection of personal taste, that of the
founders, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss, who
were greatly inf luenced by Royall Tyler, himself a
collector and connoisseur, and that of the f irst
Director, John S. Thacher. They were guided by
criteria of artistic quality and had a penchant for
precious materialsgold, silver, enamel, ivory. This
propensity gives to the Collection (or, at any rate,
that part of it that is visible to the public) the
appearance of a medieval treasury. A f inancial
contribution made to the Franco-American
excavation of Antioch in the 1930s brought in
several mosaic pavements, a silver lampstand and
ewer and a number of other objects. For the rest,
discounting gifts from individuals, the acquisitions
were limited to pieces on the art market. From
todays viewpoint it is truly remarkable that from
the 1920s to the present the market could yield
such an array of richessuperior, in the Byzantine
f ield, to that held by the greatest national museums,
with the possible exception of the Hermitage at
Leningrad.
I have mentioned the emphasis on precious
materials as representing the taste of wealthy private
collectors, but that, perhaps, is not a suff icient
explanation, since the preference expressed by the
Blisses also corresponded to a certain conception of
Byzantine art; and if we seek to f ind its formula-
tion, we may discover it in a book entitled Lart
byzantin by Hayford Peirce and none other than
Royall Tyler (Paris, 193234). In the opinion of
these authors, Byzantine art was essentially a luxury
art, an art of the Imperial Court, that was born
when the capital of the Roman State was moved to
a Greek country and that died with the Fourth
Crusade in 1204, when Greek artists, because of the
prevailing poverty, lost access to beautiful and costly
materials. After that date they turned to a descrip-
tive or anecdotal approach (referring, I suppose, to
late Byzantine painting), to mere illustration that
lacked the true spirit of Byzantium. This is not a
conception that many specialists would endorse
today, but it does have something to be said for it.
Even though the Dumbarton Oaks Collection
is not a representative cross-section of Early
Christian and Byzantine art, it is suff iciently
extensive to raise certain questions in the mind of
the informed visitor. The nature of these questions
will naturally depend on the visitors viewpoint and
40
knowledge. He may be motivated by purely
aesthetic considerations as Mrs. Bliss probably was
herself. No justif ication is needed for aesthetic
enjoyment; besides, it has been respectable since the
1920s to admire Byzantine art for interpreting,
instead of reproducing perceived reality, as Robert
Byron put it. But if the visitor wishes to understand
as well as to enjoy, he will have a harder task unless
he is content to fall back on accepted verdicts.
Understanding implies some form of classif ication,
of pigeonholing. But how is one to classify Byzan-
tine art? By date? By place? By School?
No one will deny the importance of dating.
Some Byzantine objects are, in fact, independently
dated by inscription, e.g. an appreciable part of the
silverware of the sixth and seventh centuries which
bears State control stamps and of which
Dumbarton Oaks has many important examples. It
is helpful to remember that some of the dates
provided by the stamps would not otherwise have
been guessed at. Who would have thought, for
example, that the Silenus plate (Fig. 3), to which I
shall return, was of the sixth century and not of the
third or fourth? The majority of Byzantine objects
are not, however, dated except by comparison with
other objects, so we have to content ourselves with
labels saying Fourth-sixth century or Tenth-
twelfth century. No doubt, we shall eventually get
better at this sort of thing. In the meantime, we
ought to bear in mind that recognized authorities
may disagree by as much as f ive centuries regarding
the date, not of some ring or button, but of a major
work of art; which implies either that the develop-
ment of Byzantine art is not yet known in many
areas or that it developed so slowly and impercepti-
bly as to deceive the best trained eye.
A classif ication by place and/or School is even
more problematical and, before resorting to it as if
it were self-evident, we should ask ourselves to
what extent it is helpful. Some provincial areas, it is
true, like the Coptic (rather poorly represented at
Dumbarton Oaks, except for textiles) are fairly
distinctive. But when we deal with major urban
centres, do we really know in what respect the art
of Constantinople differed from that of Antioch or
that of Alexandria? The most extreme disagree-
ments in attribution are clear evidence that we do
not.
In case I should be thought to be exaggerating,
let me single out the attractive and well-known
ivory plaque of the Nativity (Fig. 9) which is
related to a larger group of ivories, now shared
between Milan, London, Paris and Lyons. For a
long time these (or some of them) were attributed
to Alexandria or Cyrenaica with a date of c. a.d.
600; they were then moved to southern Italy or
Sicily and to the eleventh or twelfth century; while
the latest opinion, by Professor Kurt Weitzmann, is
that the Dumbarton Oaks plaque and a few of the
others are Syro-Palestinian work of the eighth
century. Professor Weitzmann is not given to f lights
of arbitrary fancy; yet not everyone has been
convinced by his arguments. So much for places
and dates.
Faced with such uncertainties, I should like to
adopt here a somewhat different approach, namely
to inquire what the objects and works of art can
tell us about Byzantine civilization, its society, its
values and its material resources. First, however, a
matter of terminology ought to be clarif ied. We
tend to speak rather vaguely of the Byzantine
period as extending, in the eastern Mediterranean,
from the foundation of Constantinople in a.d. 324
to the capture of that same city by the Turks in
1453. So did Peirce and Tyler, except that they set
the terminal date in 1204. We also speak of Early
Christian art (East and West) from its obscure
beginnings in the second century down to about
the sixth. This overlapping use of labels leads to
considerable confusion. In terms of what actually
happened, it is more helpful to think of the Later
Roman Empire, of which Constantinople was the
eastern and more important capital, an Empire that
broke down towards the middle of the seventh
century; and of its successor, the Byzantine Empire,
which reached its apogee between the ninth and
twelfth centuries and survived in a diminished form
until 1453. Only if we adopt such a historical
perspective can we place the artifacts of the periods
in question in their proper context. I shall, there-
fore, use the label Late Roman for objects dating
between the third and mid-seventh centuries,
whatever their geographical origin, and the label
Byzantine for objects produced within the Byzan-
tine Empire or under its immediate inf luence from
the mid-seventh century to the mid-f ifteenth.
41
1
Mosaic Pavement,
Antioch, second to third
century A.D. Stone tesserae,
length 2
.
64 m., width, 1
.
68
m. Acc. no. 40.64. Three
winged erotes are shown
f ishing, one from a boat and
two from the banks of the
pond. From a house at
Daphne-Harbiyer
42
2
The Riha Paten, Antioch
(?), 577. Silver repouss with
gilding and niello, diameter
35 cm. Found near Riha,
Syria. Acc. no. 24.5. Christ is
represented twice distribut-
ing the eucharistic bread and
wine to two groups of
Apostles. The rim is
inscribed in niello with a
dedication of the state
off icial Megas and his family
3
Fragment of a Plate,
Constantinople (?) 54250.
Silver cast and engraved,
present diameter 29
.
3 cm.
Acc. no. 51.20. A drunken
Silenus is shown reclining,
while another f igure blows a
trumpet in his ear. This
fragment was the centre of a
very large plate and has
hallmarks of the reign of
Justinian (52765) on the
reverse
43
Entering the Dumbarton Oaks Collection, one
treads over three Antioch pavements (Fig. 1) and
glimpses a fourth (a very big one of Tethys among
marine animals) in the pool in the open courtyard.
The mosaic pavements evoke a cultural setting.
They were made at various times between the
second century a.d. and the sixth, but were prob-
ably still in use when the city fell, f irst to the
Persians, then to the Arabs, in the seventh. They tell
us, therefore, that the citizens of Antioch in the days
of Justinian (52765) and later were still dining and
bathing amidst symbols of pagan mythology and in
circumstances of considerable material comfort.
The silver objects in several cases in the main
gallery belong to the same milieu. Some of them
are liturgicalthe famous Riha paten (Fig. 2), the
Riha chalice and the f labellum; others are secular
a dish with a hunting scene, two plates with
episodes from the story of Hippolytus and Phaedra
and the fragment of a large plate showing a partly
nude Silenus turning his head away from a horn
that a personage is jocularly blowing in his ear (Fig.
3). The Silenus plate is dated by control stamps to
the reign of Justinian and is, therefore, almost
exactly contemporary with the Riha paten, dated
(577) in the same manner. We need not concern
ourselves with the precise geographical origin of
the objects in question, nor should we suppose that
the Silenus plate was made for a person holding
pagan views.
The important fact to notice is that in the sixth
century an art with a Christian content co-existed
with an art of antique or traditional content
depending on its destination and, occasionally, on
the social class of the person that commissioned it.
By the standards of a happier age, the Augustan or
the Antonine (compare the Hildesheim silver
treasure in Berlin), the style of these objects may
appear less than ref ined, which only means that
they belong to the tail end of the classical tradition.
Anyone familiar with the literature of the period,
who has read the History of Procopius or the
epigrams of the Palatine Anthology, will have no
trouble in accommodating both the Silenus plate
and the Riha paten within the same historical
context.
Certainly, the Christian element was gaining
the upper hand with the gradual decline of the old
urban gentry and the funnelling of ever-increasing
funds into ecclesiastical donations, and here the
Sion treasure is of particular importance. It is a
silver treasure found near Antalya in southern
Turkey in 1963, of which Dumbarton Oaks holds
about one half (some thirty to forty pieces) and the
Antalya Museum most of the rest. Unfortunately,
this f ind has not yet been studied in its entirety and
many of its constituent objects, badly squashed in
the process of burial, have not been restored to
their proper shape, so that their function remains
uncertain. What is, however, obviousand in this
respect the Sion treasure is so much more instruc-
tive than single objects of the same character that
have found their way on to the marketis that we
are dealing with a considerable portion of the silver
mobilier of a provincial cult centre, that of the
monastery of Sion, set up in Lycia by a St. Nicholas
who was active in the f irst half of the sixth century
and of whom a biography is preserved. Many texts
describe the silver furnishings of contemporary
churches, particularly that of St. Sophia at
Constantinople, but never before have we been able
to visualize them so exactlythe sets of patens
(Fig. 4), chalices, censers, openwork lamps and
polycandela (Fig. 5) and various forms of revetment
that were applied to the altar table and, perhaps,
other items of furniture. Stunning as this collection
is, we must remember that an urban cathedral of
the period would have had more varied and
extensive furnishings in silver.
Late Roman jewellery, of which Dumbarton
Oaks has a particularly rich array, shows the same
mixture of secular and Christian elements, some-
times on the same object. The gold marriage belt,
for example, has Christ blessing the nuptial pair on
the larger medallions and pagan divinities on the
smaller ones (Fig. 6). One pressed gold pendant has
a f igure of Dionysus nonchalantly pouring wine
into the mouth of a panther, while another pendant
of the same period has the Baptism of Christ.
Elsewhere a nude Aphrodite in gold, standing on a
shell of lapis lazuli, holds up her long wet tresses
(Fig. 7). Equally strong is the Imperial element,
often in the form of coins or medallions that have
been incorporated into pieces of jewellery, as in the
two remarkable f iligree pendants containing
medallions of Constantine I (Fig. 8) or the two
44
4
Sion Paten,
Constantinople, c. 54665.
Silver with gilding and
niello, diameter 60
.
5 cm.
Found at Kumluca, Turkey.
Acc no. 63.36.1. Between
the engraved chrismon in the
centre and the cusped
border with leaves and
palmettes, runs a nielloed
inscription stating that the
paten was given in the time
of Bishop Eutychianus
5
Sion Polycandelon,
Constantinople, 54665.
Silver with niello, 56
.
5
56
.
6 cm. Found at Kumluca,
Turkey. Acc. no. 65.1.1. This
polycandelon is unusual in
being cruciform; the more
common form of these
suspended lamp-holders is
circular. The open circles,
which held the glass lamps,
are supported by pairs of
dolphins and foliate
ornament
45
massive gold bracelets decorated with coins of the
Emperors Maurice, Phocas and Heraclius (made
shortly before 640) that we can imagine gracing the
burly arms of a State off icial or military com-
mander.
I have mentioned the high level of urban life
that was enjoyed at Antioch until the sixth century:
the same surely applied to many other cities of the
Empire. Of this several indications may be found in
the Dumbarton Oaks Collection. Such are the
f inely made bronze lamps and lampstands that must
have been used for domestic lighting; the medicine
boxes, scribes writing case, furniture plaques and
hairpins in ivory or bone, carved with f igural
decoration; and the series of objects pertaining to
the marketplace: calibrated bronze steelyards with
hooks and chains, bronze weights in the form of an
emperor or an empress and smaller weights, usually
rectangular, with the indication of the number of
ounces inlaid in silver. There is also a great rarity,
namely a silver fork of about the sixth century, with
a spirally f luted handle terminating in an animals
head; though probably of Sasanian workmanship, it
surely ref lects Roman practices of the time. So
uncommon are forks of this period that a distin-
guished German scholar some f ifty years ago could
argue that since they are shown in representations
of the Last Supper in Cappadocia, the paintings in
question (executed, in fact, in the eleventh century)
could hardly be earlier than the f ifteenth or
sixteenth!
When we turn to the objects of the Byzantine
period, i.e. of the eighth and following centuries,
we may not be immediately aware that we are
confronting a somewhat different civilization. At
f irst sight there is no evidence of a dramatic
change; on the contrary, there is a deceptive
continuity, especially in the retention of a canon of
religious illustration which both in its iconography
and its style remains close to much earlier models.
What we may not immediately perceive is the
disappearance of whole categories of artifacts: there
are no longer any bronze lamps or lampstands, any
steelyards or weights, any forks or spoons, any
medicine boxes or furniture ornaments. Secular
silver of whatever description is totally lacking.
Even ecclesiastical silver is represented only by one
icon frame (gilded silver and enamel) and three
crosses, the most interesting of which depicts the
miracles of the Archangel Michael and
Constantines conversion by Pope Sylvester (Fig.
10): it should not, incidentally, be associated with
the Patriarch Michael Keroularios (104358) as has
been asserted. In the place of the massive silver
patens of the sixth century, we f ind only two
copper ones. Jewellery remains very f ine, but its
range is more limited than in the earlier period and
the objects themselves become smaller. The Impe-
rial element in the form of inset coins or medal-
lions is replaced by religious imagery. Increasing use
is made of cloisonn enamel, as on a beautiful gold
clasp with busts of Christ and the Virgin Mary (Fig.
11). At the same time there is a growing tendency
towards personalization in the sense that the
owners Christian and family names are occasionally
inscribed, witness the ring of the eleventh-century
historian Michael Attaleiates or that of the twelfth-
century admiral Michael Stryphnos.
Setting aside personal jewellery, the secular
sphere is pretty much limited to two ivory boxes
and a collection of glazed pottery. The f irst of the
boxes is a rosette casket attributed to the late tenth
or eleventh century (Fig. 12), not nearly as f ine as
the Veroli Casket in the Victoria and Albert Mu-
seum, but a good specimen of the same class
nevertheless. It bears tiny, pudgy f igures, some of
them nude, most of them armed. In Professor
Weitzmanns opinion they have been copied partly
from an illustrated Book of Joshua, partly from a
Dionysiac processionan odd combination of
sources, which suggests that the f igures have lost all
meaning just as they have lost any feeling for the
human form. The other ivory box, a diminutive
circular pyxis (height only 2.9 cm.), is quite unique.
It represents two Imperial families and the offering
of a city, probably of Thessalonica to the Emperor
John VII in 14034.
The collection of glazed pottery, though
limited to the last phase of Byzantine art (twelfth to
fourteenth centuries) is remarkable for the number
of complete pieces it contains (Fig. 13). Here we
reach a broader social class than that of the aristo-
crats and government dignitaries who could afford
gold and ivory and it is interesting to observe that
the pottery in question is completely divorced from
the antique tradition. The graff ito technique, the
46
6
Marriage Belt (detail).
East Mediterranean, late
sixth to seventh century.
Gold pressed discs, diameters
4
.
8 cm. and 2
.
5 cm. length
75
.
5 cm. Repurtedly found
at Antioch. Acc. no. 37.33.
The two large discs showing
Christ between the marriage
couple are inscribed from
god, concord, grace and
health and the twenty-one
small discs are ornamented
with busts of Dionysiac
characters
7
Necklace (detail of
pendant), East Mediterra-
nean, early seventh century.
Gold and lapis lazuli, length
83 cm., height of pendant
(without chains) 4
.
5 cm.
Repurtedly from Egypt. Acc.
no. 28.6. A gold Aphrodite
Anadyomene is mounted in
the lapis lazuli shell
8
Pendant with Medal-
lion of Constantine I,
East Mediterranean, fourth
century. Gold Struck
medallion mounted in opus
interrasile, diameter 8
.
5 cm.
Acc. no. 70.37.
The medallion of
Constantine I (30637), a
two solidi piece, was struck
at Sirmium in 324 and is a
unique specimen. The
pendant in which it is set,
with three male and three
female projecting busts, may
have been executed
elsewhere
47
decoration of stylized animals, the splashes of green
and brown glaze are of a type that was then current
all over the Near East in both Muslim and Chris-
tian lands.
The rest of the Byzantine objects in the
Collection are decorated with religious subjects,
whether they were intended for ecclesiastical or
private use. Among several pendant reliquaries,
there is a lovely one of St. Sergius in gold and an
even more curious one of St. Demetrius in gold
and enamel. There is a superb series of small ivory
icons, such as that representing the Incredulity of
Thomas (Fig. 14), one of a set that originally
included the Twelve Feasts. There are also two
miniature mosaic icons of great rarity, that of the
Forty Martyrs of Sebaste which shows the
Palaeologan style at its very best, and that of St.
John Chrysostom (Fig. 15) in which the same style
has been used to more hieratic effect. The sphere of
illuminated manuscripts is represented by three
books and three single leaves, the most interesting
being a magnif icent Psalter and New Testament of
the year 1084 that once belonged to the
Pantocrator monastery on Mount Athos (Fig. 16).
Paradoxically, it is in objects such as these that the
antique tradition survives, encapsulated in the
unchanging conventions of Christian iconography.
It would be, of course, unwarranted to draw
any broad historical conclusions from the contents
of a single collection, especially one so personal as
that of Dumbarton Oaks, and I would not have
made the above remarks had they not applied in
large measure to all other collections of Byzantine
antiquities. What strikes me is not so much the
restriction of the secular element in Byzantine art
as the scarcity of the kinds of object, still common
in the Later Roman world, that bespeak a high level
of individual comfort and a developed urban life.
This can hardly be due to accidents of preservation.
If the medieval Byzantines had continued to use on
a large scale f inely made objects in their daily life,
such as lamps, candlesticks, metal vessels, toilet
articles, etc., the chances are that an appreciable
number of them would have survived and found
their way into museums. Seeing that they have not,
one can only conclude that the domain of civilized
life shrank very considerably between Late Antiq-
uity and medieval Byzantium, as it also did in
western Europe.
It was not the Blisses intention to create what
would be called today a study collection so as to
document all aspects of Byzantine civilization. Even
so, it would not be true to say that they used artistic
quality as their sole criterion. Thus, Mrs. Bliss
provided funds for the acquisition of many thou-
sands of lead seals which are of little beauty, but
will constitute, when published, an extremely
important body of material for the prosopographic
9
Nativity of Christ, Syria
or Palestine (?), end of
seventh to eighth entury (?).
Ivory plaque, 9
.
3 19
.
1 cm.
Acc. no. 51.30. The Virgin
and Child, f lanked by
Joseph and Salome, are set
against a dense architectural
background instead of the
usual cave. Variously dated
from 600 to the twelfth
century, and assigned to
workshops from Alexandria
to Sicily, the present
attribution was lately
proposed by Professor
Weitzmann on the basis of
iconographic and stylistic
details of the entire group
of fourteen plaques, to
which the Nativity beongs.
The latter may have been
attached to a church
sanctuary door
48
10
Three Arms of a Cross,
Constantinople (?),
eleventh-twelfth century.
Silver with gilding and
niello, height of upper arm
15
.
3 cm., width of left arm
7
.
5 cm. Gift of John S.
Thacher. Acc no. 64.13. The
upper arm shows the
Conversion of the Emperor
Constantine (30637), who
bows towards the icons of
Saints Peter and Paul, held
by Pope Sylvester. On the
left arm is represented the
Miracle at Chonae in Phrygia,
in which the Archangel
Michael saves a church from
a torrent of water; it is
inscribed the funneling of
the waters. The third
surviving arm features a
scene from Joshua (5:1315)
49
11
Necklace Clasp, obverse
and reverse,
Constantinople, tenth
century. Gold and cloisonn
enamel, 2
.
3 5 cm. Gift in
Memory of Frances Lake
Thacher. Acc. no. 65.4 A
bust of Christ is on the
obverse (to the right) and
that of the Virgin Mary on
the reverse (to the left). The
wires surrounding the
quatrefoil plaque were
originally strung with pearls
12
Rosette Casket,
Constantinople, late tenth to
eleventh century. Ivory
mounted on wood, 16 22
16 cm. Acc. no. 53.1. One
of a group of caskets
characterized by their bands
of rosette ornament. The
warriors on the f ifteen
rectangular panels and the
animals in the vine rinceau
have apparently been drawn
from a number of icono-
graphic sources. Dionysiac
battle and grape harvesting
scenes, the Book of Joshua,
the Physiologus, the
Phaeonomena of Aratus and a
textile
50
13
Shallow Bowl, Byzantine,
thirteenth century. Glazed and
incised pottery, diameter 31
.
7
cm. Acc. no. 58.103.
The f igure of a Harpy
wearing an elaborate
headdress is incised through
the slip-painted ware and
covered by a pale green glaze.
The marked orientalizing
features of the design suggest
the dish was made in the
Chersonese or possibly the
Caucasus
and administrative study of the Byzantine Empire.
Inevitably, as we look back, we can point to certain
areas that the Blisses neglected, for example that of
painted icons. Fifty years ago many excellent icons
could have been acquired and it is a pity they were
not, considering their present popularity and rise in
value. The same may, perhaps, be said of illuminated
manuscripts. Though the possibilities of purchase
are not the same today as they were when the
Blisses were active, one may hope that the
Dumbarton Oaks Collection will gradually f ill the
few gaps in its holdings so as to ref lect more fully
all the signif icant aspects of the Byzantine artistic
heritage.
14
Plaque, Constantinople,
mid-tenth century. Ivory,
10.6 8.8 cm. Acc. no. 37.7.
The Incredubility of Thomas is
inscribed the doors being
shut ( John 20:26) and
shows the usual eleven
Apostles, without Judas.
Carved in very high relief,
the plaque was strongly
inf luenced by painted icons
or miniatures
51
15
Portable Mosaic Icon,
Constantinople, c. 1325.
Glass tesserae set in wax
ground with wood backing,
18 13 cm. Acc. no. 54.2.
St. John Crysostom, whose
name is inscribed on the
golden background, holds a
gospel book
16
Headpiece of the
Magnificat, Illuminated
Manuscript,
Constantinople, c. 1084.
Tempera on parchment, 16
.
2
10
.
3 cm. Once belonged
to the Pantocrator
Monastery on Mt. Athos.
Acc. no. 62.35. This shows a
two-zone composition of
The Annunciation (above) and
the Seated Virgin, who holds
an open prayer book
(below). The opening initial
of the text is historiated
with The Visitation
Ku r t We i t z ma n n
The Saint Peter Icon of Dumbarton Oaks
We see the apostle* half-length, slightly turned
to his left and looking with concentration into the
outside world, his gaze bypassing the beholder
(Plate IV). He is dressed, as usual, in tunic and
pallium, the former being dark blue, the latter olive
green, highlighted in gold, and rich in folds that
suggest a soft material. With his left hand he holds
two attributes simultaneously, and the somewhat
distorted rendering of the f leshy hand suggests that
the artist had some diff iculty in making him hold
both in one grip. One attribute is a long staff
surmounted by a black metallic cross with spiral
leaves at the bottom and knobs at the ends of the
arms; the cross of Peters martyrdom has here
become a liturgical objectthat is, a processional
cross staff. The other attribute is a scroll tied by a
red string, similar to an Imperial chrysobullon. With
the long f ingers of his right hand, of which the
knuckles are emphasized, Peter points at the scroll,
thereby alluding to the writing of his Epistles.
There is, however, still a third attribute: two golden
keys with which the gates of Paradise are to be
opened. In a most unusual depiction, for which I
know no parallel, the keys are hanging from the
neck on a golden cord. All three attributes have
traditionally been associated with Peter, but their
combination here in a single composition is quite
exceptional.
Turning now to a closer examination of the
head of the Dumbarton Oaks St. Peter, the most
striking features are the pronounced plasticity of
the skull and the f irm f leshy face with its articu-
lated muscles, which together produce the effect of
a high degree of physical reality. His penetrating
eyes set beneath contracted brows give the impres-
sion of intense concentration, on the one hand, and
of a brooding moodwhich might also be inter-
preted as a quick temperon the other. But no
matter how one interprets the expression of the
face, there can be no doubt that it was the painters
intent to depict Peter in a state of tension. Yet the
underlying naturalism of the head is mitigated by
the adoption of stylized formulae for certain
features. The focal point is the junction of the
bridge of the nose and the brows where a U-
shaped wedge, coming down from the forehead,
separates the arched brows, and where two tufts of
white hair jut out with almost explosive force.
Creasing the forehead are two long furrows, one
ending upward, the other downward, which serve
to intensify the frowning expression. The nose,
instead of forming a continuous ridge, is tripartite,
structured (metaphorically speaking) almost like a
column, with a globe-like base, a swelling shaft, and
a basket capital. The tendency toward linear form
led to an oval pattern for the right cheek. The
desire for vivid forms is marked in the treatment of
the hair, which is depicted as a series of short
overlapping locks, two rows of which cover the
head, while others cascade along the right temple
and form the scalloped, parted beard. Even the f low
of the moustache is disrupted in order to underline
the general staccato effect. Each one of these
devices serves the purpose of heightening the
mood of the f igure.
How is the Dumbarton Oaks icon to be dated?
In our view it is at least a generation earlier than
the frescoes of the Protaton, Mt. Athos, of around
*
The most important addition to the Dumbarton Oaks
Byzantine Collection in nearly two decades, this icon of St.
Peter (acc. no. 82.2) is without parallel outside the Balkans
in its combination of extraordinary size (93.1 61.3 cm),
quality, and art-historical signif icance. The present short
article was excerpted and adapted from a lecture of the same
title delivered by Kurt Weitzmann at the opening of the
exhibition Masterpieces of Byzantine Icon Painting, held at
Dumbarton Oaks on April 27, 1983, in honour of this new
acquisition. The full text of the lecture has recently appeared
as Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Collection Publications, no.
6.
54
Plate IV
St. Peter by a Greek
painter working in
Macedonia or Serbia, c. third
quarter of the thirteenth
century. Tempera on panel,
93
.
1 61
.
3 cm. The most
important addition to the
Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine
Collection (1982) in nearly
two decades, this icon is
without parallel in
collections outside the
Balkans for its combination
of extraordinary size, quality,
and art-historical signif i-
cance. Its high level of
plasticity and emotional
expressionism are stylistic
qualities which associate it
with Macedonia
55
1300, and not much later than those at Miles.eva, in
Serbia, of about 1235.
1
The former represent the
fully-developed Palaeologan style, which our icon
has not reached, while the latter show the formal
devices upon which Peters already fully developed
style rests. In the sixty year period between the
frescoes of Miles.eva and those of the Protaton,
there is one major dated monumentthe Trinity
Church of Sopocani, in Serbia, erected and
decorated around 1265 by the Serbian Tzar Stephen
Uros.. Among its frescoes is an especially impressive
head of Paul (Fig. 1),
2
which immediately suggests a
relationship with our Peter icon. In general, there is
a similar degree of plasticity in the well-structured
head, and a comparable forcefulness in the expres-
sion of the face; in particular there are the familiar
devices used to delineate the eyebrows, the fur-
rowed forehead, the U-shaped wedge into the
bridge of the nose, and the oval of the cheek.
Drawing our conclusions from this and other
evidence, we would like to date the Dumbarton
Oaks St. Peter icon to the third quarter of the
thirteenth century and close to Sopocani, leaving
open the possibility that it may be a bit earlier or
later. Thus we propose a date somewhat earlier than
that suggested by Manolis Chatzidakis,
3
but we
completely agree with him on the attribution to
Macedonia. He and A. Xyngopoulos before him
have consistently stressed the realistic element in
Macedonian painting, the centre of which was
Thessaloniki. But this does not necessarily mean
that our icon was executed in Thessaloniki, since
artists from that centre worked in Ohrid, and in
many other places in Macedonia and Serbia. It thus
seems wiser to attribute the Dumbarton Oaks icon
to the hand of a Greek painter working in
Macedonia or Serbia.
All scholars who have worked on Macedonian
painting of the thirteenth century have realized that
Macedonia did not possess a clearly-def ined style
of its own, and that Thessaloniki, its artistic centre,
at all times depended strongly on Constantinople.
The diff iculty is to def ine this dependence and the
subtle differences of style between these two
dominant artistic centres within the Byzantine
Empire. Because of the lack of material securely
localized in the capital, particularly in the unsettled
period of the Latin conquest (120461), there is no
basis for concrete comparison. And while we
cannot solve this problem here, we can, I think,
bring its solution perhaps one step closer. There is
an icon in the Monastery of St. Catherine at Mt.
Sinai with a majestic bust of St. Peter which, at one
metre in height, is even slightly larger than the
Dumbarton Oaks icon; its impressive features
became apparent only after its recent cleaning (Fig.
2).
4
In his left hand Peter holds a scroll, and a pair
of keys on a ring over the index f inger. What is
most striking about the f igure, however, are the
plasticity and clear structure of the head, and the
sharp but at the same time brooding gaze, which is
achieved with devices similar to those of the
Dumbarton Oaks icon: the U-shaped wedge
between the brows which causes the effect of
frowning, the tufts of hair, et cetera. Yet there are also
decisive differences. The Sinai Peter is more
withdrawn and more aristocratic, qualities which
are usuallyand this is true for all periods
associated with the style of Constantinople. Yet, the
stylistic features of both icons have so much in
common that it seems likely that both ultimately
depend on the same sourcea source we believe to
have been Constantinople. The measurably greater
degree of realism in the Dumbarton Oaks icon
must be considered the Macedonian contribution.
Of course we do not know whether the Sinai Peter
was in fact the product of a Constantinopolitan
atelier, as it may well have been. Another possibility
would be Cyprus, where the Sinai monastery had
(and still has) major possessions, and from which it
recruited artists, especially in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries.
By its size (nearly a metre high) and composi-
tion, the Dumbarton Oaks Peter belongs to a
category of large icons which were not made to be
single and self-contained, but rather to be part of
1
For the Protaton, compare especially A. Xyngopoulos,
Manuel Panselinos, 1956, Plate 17; and for Miles eva, S.
Radojcic, Miles eva, (in Serbo-Croatian), 1963, Plate XIII.
2
V. J. Duric, Sopocani, 1963, Plate I.
3
Icons and East Christian Works of Art, ed. M. van Rijn,
1980, 168f.
4
Unpublished; 105.7 71.1 cm. It was cleaned by T.
Margaritoff in 1967.
56
1
St. Paul (detail), c. 1265,
Trinity Church, Sopocani,
Serbia. Fresco. This
impressive head immediately
suggests a relationship with
the Dumbarton Oaks icon
(Plate IV) by its plasticity
and the forcefulness of its
expression. Compare also
the U-shaped wedge at the
bridge of the nose, and the
oval of the cheek
2
St. Peter, Constantinople
or Cyprus, f irst half of the
thirteenth century. Tempera
on panel, 105
.
7 71
.
1 cm.
Monastery of St. Catherine,
Mt. Sinai. The panel has
been cleaned of its later
overpainting to reveal an
image more withdrawn and
aristocratic than that of
Plate IVqualities that
associate it with the
Byzantine capital
57
grander ensembles. That Peter is shown turning
toward one side indicates that he once had a
companion icon of Paul, probably much like that
which survives as the pendant to the Sinai Peter
(Fig. 3).
5
And quite surely, both portraits would
have been placed on an iconostasis, that screen of
holy images which separates the sanctuary from the
nave in an Orthodox church. Moreover, their
extraordinary size suggests that they were placed
below the epistyle, between the columns of the
iconostasis, where they would likely have f lanked
5
Unpublished; 104.3 89.8 cm. It is slightly smaller in
height than the Peter icon, but that the two icons form a pair
cannot be questioned. To my knowledge the Paul icon has
not yet been cleaned.
3
St. Paul, Constantinople or
Cyprus, f irst half of the
thirteenth century. Tempera
on panel, 104
.
3 89
.
8 cm.
Monastery of St. Catherine,
Mt. Sinai. Unlike Figure 2
this panel has not been
cleaned, but is a companion
piece to St. Peter, much like
that which would have
accompanied the
Dumbarton Oaks icon
portraits of Christ, the Virgin, and John the Baptist
as part of a Great Deesis.
Although the Dumbarton Oaks Peter stands in
a f irmly established artistic tradition, it shows a
relatively greater individuality compared with other
St. Peter icons of the period. Stylistically, it has a
rare combination of a high degree of physical
reality on the one hand, and an intensity of emo-
tional expression on the other. Iconographically, it
shows a hair style which has no precise parallel
among any of the other heads of Peter, and it is
apparently unique in the motif of wearing the keys
around the neck. Thus, this icon f ills a gap not only
in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection but also in our
knowledge of thirteenth-century icon painting
generally.
Ag n e s Mo n g a n
A Fte of Flowers: Women Artists Contribution to Botanical Illustration
Every year thousands of visitors come to see
and enjoy the gardens at Dumbarton Oaks. Few of
these visitors are aware of the planning that went
into the preparation of the gardens or that Mrs.
Bliss, as she grew older, instead of narrowing her
interest in gardens, stretched her imagination and
broadened her knowledge of them. After World
War II, she began with acumen and enthusiasm to
collect beautifully illustrated garden books and
manuscripts. She called on three different sources
for advice: her friend, the designer of the gardens,
Beatrix Farrand; the Houghton Library (the rare
book library at Harvard); and the librarian at the
Harvard School of Architecture. Although the
Blisses had donated Dumbarton Oaks to Harvard
University in 1940, in 1963 Mrs. Bliss commis-
sioned the construction of a new wing of the
building to house her collection which became the
property of Harvard on her death in 1969 (Fig. 1).
In a volume now at the library, in which a
record was kept of her acquisitions, the f irst garden
book entry is dated 1948. It lists Stevens and
Liebaults Countrie Farm (or Maison Rustique)
published in 1600. That book was a fortunate
beginning. As long as she lived Mrs. Bliss continued
to acquire not only standard reference books, which
she added to her already considerable collection of
How To books on gardening, but also rare and
beautiful publications or manuscripts devoted to
f lowers, gardens or fountains. The collection grew
steadily and when she died it had become one of
usefulness and distinction.
The stacks in the downstairs library contain
nearly 7,000 reference books. Rare books devoted
to botany or portfolios of original drawings, which
date from the late f ifteenth century to the present,
are kept in the beautifully lighted, spacious Rare
Book Room. There are about 3,500 volumes.
It is not too surprising to f ind that the Garden
Library contains a large number of books by and
about women and their enduring concern with the
f loral and herbal world. For centuries f loral and
herbal illustration has been considered one of the
few appropriate genres for women artists. In 1772,
G.{t}B. Passeri prefaced his account of the lives of
artists and architects of Rome (which included
only one woman) by writing
. . . the Lord did not endow them (women) properly
with the faculty of judgement, and this he did in order to
keep them restrained within the boundaries of obedience to
men, to establish men as supreme and superior, so that with
this lack, women would be more amenable to suggestion.
The ladies discussed here were not always very
amenable to suggestion.
An outstanding but little-known woman artist
represented in the collection, Giovanna Garzoni
(160070) came from Ascoli Piceno, the Marches,
Italy. She worked in Florence, as well as Rome and
Naples. That she was well-known in her own time
can be surmised when we learn that among her
patrons were the Medici, the rulers of Florence, and
the Spanish Viceroy of Naples. Her portrait was
painted by two of the leading artists of the period,
Carlo Maratta and Sassoferrato. She was a member
of the Roman Accademia di San Luca, and it was
to that academy that she bequeathed her estate and
an album containing twenty-two studies of insects
and f lowers. In the Garden Library there is a large
folio volume, almost completely unknown, even to
specialists. It contains f ifty watercolours of plants by
Giovanna Garzoni as well as a frontispiece (Fig. 2).
The latter shows within an elaborate frame sup-
ported by three cherubs, a self-portrait in red and
black chalk. On the frame, in capital letters in heavy
ink, is: giovanna garzoni. ascolana miniatrice. A
collectors stamp at the lower left reveals that the
book once belonged to the Strozzi family.
The watercolours, all full-page and measuring
49.5 38 cm, reveal not only an artist of exquisite
60
1
The Rare Book Room
of the Dumbarton Oaks
Garden Library. Designed
by Frederick Rhinelander
King and completed in 1963
61
the example of William Roscoe and his daughter-
in-law, both of whom published f lower illustration
books, she had her watercolours published as a
book entitled A Selection of Hexandrian Plants
belonging to the Natural Orders Amaryllidae and Liliacae
(London, 1834). A comparison of the plates of the
book and the watercolours, also in the collection,
shows the astonishingly faithful reproduction made
possible by the recently invented colour printing
techniques used. Robert Havell, Mrs. Burys printer,
is better known for his printing of John James
Audubons The Birds of America.
In 1816 George Brookshaw published in
London a delightful and instructive volume, A new
Treatise on Flower Painting or Every Lady her Own
Drawing Master . . . Familiar and Easy Instructions. It
was one of the many books on the subject to
appear in the nineteenth century when it was
fashionable for all young ladies to learn to draw
f lowers. A folio containing f ifteen watercolours by
a French lady, Cline Guillaume, is entitled Histoire
Naturelle Botanique. The artist, whose dates are
unknown, lists f ifteen classes of plants and draws,
on heavy wove paper, one example from each class.
Opposite the lively and exquisite watercolour is a
page headed by the plants botanical class. Beneath
the latter, within a ruled pen and coloured ink
border, are the families. Descriptions in very f ine
script note the distinguishing characteristics of each
family (Fig. 7).
Another handsome volume bears the title The
Fte of Flowers. It is a seven page sentimental
gathering of light verse opposite watercolours of
f lowers. The unsophisticated verse, handwritten on
pages with borders of f lowers drawn in a light pen
line, is followed by a section, Blossoms and Berries,
which contains eight watercolours of different
berries, wild roses and deadly nightshade (Fig. 8). A
pencilled note opposite the title page states, jane
elizabeth giraud, 1868. Author of Flowers of
Milton, Flowers of Shakespeare.
An American example of ladies f lower
illustration of this era is Laura Gordon Munsons
Flowers from My Garden Sketched and Painted from
Nature with an introductory poem by the author
(New York, Anson D. F. Randall, 1864). The
aquatints are intense in colour and varied in design
(Fig. 9).
accuracy and control, but one of a lively and
delightful inventiveness. At the top of each page,
the scientif ic name and reference is written in ink.
One can follow the reference. For example: on the
f irst page which represents a plant of sea holly, (Fig.
3) there is written at the top of the page in heavy
ink: eryngium maritinum casp bauh: 386 p.m. If
one turns to Kaspar Bauhins Theatri Botanici, f irst
published in Basel in 1658, one f inds on page 386
under eryngium maritinum reference both to
Dioscorides and Pliny, suff icient indication that our
artist was acquainted with the botanical history of
Greece and Rome, as well as that of her own time.
When we move to the end of the seventeenth
century, there is a volume bound in white parch-
ment, a coat of arms stamped in gold on its front
cover. The title page records, within a wreath of
exquisitely drawn and deftly coloured tulips,
carnations and other f lowers (Fig. 4), that the
volume was offered to the world famous University
of Altdorf in 1692 by the author Magdalena
Rosina Funck, about whom nothing is known. The
book contains 295 watercolours of f lowers all
drawn in a very f ine, thin, precise line and coloured
with an astonishing range of light colours. The
name of each f lower is written in black ink below
the f lower.
Naturally one would expect to f ind at least one
volume by the seventeenth-century naturalist,
Maria Sibylla Merian (16471717). The daughter
and wife of artists, she devoted her career to the
study and illustration of insects in their natural
environment. Her major innovation was the
depiction of insects on the plants on which they
were normally to be found (Fig. 5). Her illustrations
are notable for their botanical as well as their
entomological beauty and accuracy.
Her interests in natural history led her to travel
with her young daughter to Surinam, today the
Republic of Suriname, where she remained for
three years. In the library there is a f ine copy of her
book, Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensum,
published in 1719, two years after her death.
When we move into the f irst half of the
nineteenth century, there is a portfolio containing
twenty-four watercolours by Priscilla Susan Bury,
the wife of a railroad engineer, who lived and
worked in Liverpool (Fig. 6). Possibly inspired by
62
2
Self-Portrait by
Giovanna Garzoni (1600
70), ms. c. 1650. Red and
black chalk. Frontispiece to
Piantae Variae
3
Eryngium Maritinum
(Sea Holly) by Giovanna
Garzoni. Watercolour. Fol. 1,
Piantae Variae
63
4
Title page, Blumenbuch by
Magdalena Funck (active
late seventeenth century),
ms. 1692. Watercolour
5
Plate 67, Disertatio de
Generationi et Meta-
morphosis Insectorum
Surinamensium by Maria
Sibylla Merian (16471717),
(2nd ed.) 1719. Engraving
with watercolour
64
6
Amaryillis Johnsoni by
Priscilla Susan Bury (active
183137), 1829.
Watercolour. No. 14 of the
twenty-f ive in the
Collection
7
Liseron, Histoire Naturel
Botanique by Cline
Guillaume (nineteenth
century). Watercolour
65
8
Blossoms and Berries,
The Fte of Flowers by Jane
Elizabeth Giraud (nine-
teenth century), ms. 1890.
Pencil and watercolour
9
Crocus, Flowers from my
Garden, Sketched and Painted
from Nature by Laura
Gordon Munson (nine-
teenth century), 1864.
Aquatint
66
10
Guttiferae Clusia by
Margaret Mee, 1960.
Watercolour. Used in
preparation for the printed
folio Flowers of the Brazilian
Forests, 1968
11
Magnolia Virginiana
by Marian Ellis Rowan
(18481922). Watercolour
67
The twentieth century is represented by an
impressive folio of Brazilian f lowers drawn and
painted in watercolours in the 1950s and 1960s by
Margaret Mee, an English resident of Brazil. The
watercolours are rich in colour, varied in texture
and handsome in design (Fig. 10). A note informs
us that they were made at Visconde de Maua, S.
Paulo. A foreword on Brazilian forests was contrib-
uted by the distinguished Brazilian artist, architect
and landscape designer Roberto Burle Marx, and a
preface by Sir George Taylor, the former Director
of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.
Four large handsome watercolour drawings by
the Australian artist, Marian Ellis Rowan (1848
1922) are on exhibition in the stairway hall of the
library. Rowan spent her life recording the beautiful
and exotic f lora of her native country. Widowed at
an early age, she travelled the outback and
rainforests painting the f lowers and shrubs she saw.
Many of her illustrations were eventually purchased
by the National Library of Australia as a priceless
record of the subcontinent before civilization. The
four paintings at Dumbarton Oaks of American
plants were given in 1968 to Mrs. Bliss by Lady
Casey, the wife of the then Australian Ambassador
to the United States (Fig. 11).
The collection of works by women artists in
the Dumbarton Oaks collection is characteristic of
the variety of aims their art fulf illed. While some of
the paintings were done as pastimes by society
ladies, such as the Fte of Flowers or as designs for
embroidery or other decorative arts, most had a
serious scientif ic purpose. Plant studies and depic-
tions by women over the centuries made important
contributions to the developing science of botany
and the dissemination of knowledge of newly
discovered species.
We have mentioned only some of the women
artists represented in the Garden Library at
Dumbarton Oaks. There are others of equal talents
and distinction whose works are to be found in this
very special collection.
Di a n e Ko s t i a l Mc Gu i r e
The Gardens
. . . the serenity of open spaces and ancient trees; . . . are
as integral a part of Humanism at Dumbarton Oaks as are
the Library and the Collection.
Mildred B. Bliss
1
The Dumbarton Oaks garden is an especially
well-designed and well-maintained example in
America of European inf luence in gardens as it was
interpreted in the earlier part of this century by
American designers who wished to offer their
clients opulence, grandeur, a sense of history and
European sophistication. It is the work of two
women, the client Mildred B. Bliss and the designer
Beatrix Farrand,
2
both possessed of highly ref ined
taste, who wished to create the atmosphere of the
culture of early Humanism which they saw as most
appropriate for private recreation combined with
scholarly pursuits. Major construction began in the
gardens in 1922 and continued through the transfer
of ownership to Harvard University in 1941 until
Mrs. Blisss death in 1969. The maturity of the
garden as a work of art most closely approximating
to the vision Mildred Bliss and Beatrix Farrand had
of the garden, was attained in the f ive year period
from 1936 to 1941.
Fortunately, the garden was recorded at this
time in a topographical view (Fig. 1) by Ernest
Clegg, which occupies a position of central
importance above the f ireplace in the music room
and is especially valuable because it indicates the
extent of the garden, including the twenty-seven
acres of the naturalistic section. This was not given
to Harvard in 1941, but instead went to the
National Park Service and has been allowed in the
last forty years to grow over, although several
architectural features remain, in various states of
ruin, objects of curiosity for the garden archaeolo-
gist. The present garden consists of all of the formal
spaces and some of the more naturalistic portion.
These formal enclosures form a series of outdoor
chambers (Fig. 2), used for different functions, some
ceremonial, some private, but all characterized by a
sense of appropriateness and f itness with respect to
scale and choice of materials.
GARDEN STRUCTURES
There are several important structures which
reinforce the architectural quality of the garden
enclosures, as well as providing contrast to the
plantings. Preceding the Bliss ownership of the
property is the Orangery which was built by
Robert Beverly, c. 1810. It is a distinguished
structure, originally a rectangular pavilion with
seven, tall, arched sash windows (formerly eighteen
panes by eighteen) on the south side and three on
the east end (Fig. 8). An impressive f ig, Ficus pumila,
whose branches now cover the interior of the
building, was growing here as early as 1860. The
roof of the Orangery was redesigned by Lawrence
White of McKim, Mead and White, architects who
collaborated with Beatrix Farrand on the additions
to the house. Now, f ifty years later, a new roof has
been designed and restoration of this charming
building continues at the present moment. The
Orangery houses mediterranean plants from the
arbour terrace in winter, as the temperatures in
Washington can fall to 21C during periods of
severe cold. In the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries orangeries were found on properties of
some size, especially in Virginia; there is a well-
restored example at Mount Vernon and another at
Wye House,
3
in Maryland, which were used 1
From the preamble to the last will and testament, August
1966.
2
Beatrix Jones Farrand (18721959) landscape gardener,
and the only woman founder of The American Society of
Landscape Architects, 1899.
3
Wye House, in Talbot County, Maryland was the home
of Colonel Edward Lloyd, brother-in-law of Robert
Beverly. The Orangery at Wye is a considerably larger
70
1
A Topographical View of
Dumbarton Oaks,
Georgetown, D.C. by
Ernest Clegg 1935. Water
colour on paper. Although
located in the centre of one
of the oldest sections of
Washington, D.C., the
gardens express the
atmosphere of a country
estate
71
2
The Lovers Lane Pool,
1923. This charming garden
theatre has seats adapted
from the well-known open-
air theatre on the slopes of
the Janiculum Hill at the
Accademia degli Arcad
Bosco Parrasio
72
3
The North Vista. The
view is taken from the main
door from the garden into
the house, the broad sweep
of lawn ending with the
large tulip poplar in the
distance
73
the Chteau Montargis).
4
It is planted almost
entirely with wisteria, mainly of the lavender
variety, but with some plants of white.
THE GARDEN FURNITURE
The garden furniture and the various gates are
of special interest, most of them are unique in
design although there are also pairs and sets. These
are constructed of teak or cypress, often with iron
work (in the form of rods in strapping) incorpo-
rated in the design. Most of the furniture has been
designed for its specif ic place in the garden, and is
therefore appropriate in scale and form, as well as in
type of material. This furniture was designed as the
garden developed by Beatrix Farrand in the
following manner. Initially, in consultation with her
patron she would decide the location of a pro-
posed piece and its general form or style, as well as
the specif ic materials, then preliminary sketches
were prepared in her New York off ice.
5
She would
comment on, reject or approve these sketches
several times as the process continued. Eventually,
three or four alternative sketches would be ap-
proved by Beatrix Farrand and shown to Mildred
Bliss. When a design was chosen, it would be
mocked-up and the full-scale mock-up placed in
the garden for further study. Adjustments were
made in proportion and often subtle design changes
were decided upon at this critical stage. It was
typical of Mildred Bliss to come back after one of
her trips abroad and to study a great many of these
mock-ups at one time, including not only garden
furniture, but gates, piers, walls and sculpture as well.
Only after her inspection was the furniture actually
constructed and placed in the garden.
Although Beatrix Farrand maintained through-
out her long career that the wishes of the client
were of paramount importance and one of the two
great responsibilities she had as a designer (the other
being to f it the garden to the form of the land), it
would have been informative to have overheard the
two women discuss such matters. Beatrix Farrand
primarily for citrus fruits and tender ornamentals.
At Dumbarton Oaks, the Orangery is now attached
to the house by a passage which provides a cross-
axial entry to the formal part of the gardens,
effectively dividing them from the informality of
the sweeping east and south lawns.
The loggia and the Pool House, set into and
below the Green Terrace to take advantage of the
abrupt grade change, were also designed by McKim,
Mead and White in 1926, and ref lect in their design
the inf luence of the Orangery, but with a more
studied mediterranean effect. It is in the immediate
area of the swimming pool (Fig. 4) with its dra-
matic siting and its architectural complexity that
one can now experience the atmosphere and the
ambience of the French Riviera that Mildred Bliss
sought to evoke. Adjacent to the pool, facing the
former tennis court (now the pebble garden) is a
generous pergola of semi-circular design with
handsome built-in teak seats. The provision of
shade and the modelling of the earth to take
advantage of the prevailing breezes were primary
requirements in the design of the garden as it was
intended to be used for exercise as well as for more
sedentary pursuits.
In the lower portion, three large tool houses
dominate, their ornate roofs covered with convex
terracotta tiles in an armorial shield pattern; they
are designed in the Portuguese manner with curved
lines and heavy, strapped, cypress doors. One of
these houses is the focal point of the cutting garden
and is f lanked by two large English lead cisterns,
with Sophora japonica behind. This composition is
directly reminiscent of the English gardens in
Oporto, terraced as they are down to the banks of
the Duoro with a combination of Portuguese
design and English artifacts.
A long, rustic arbour marks the southern end
of the kitchen garden and another more elaborate
arbour is the dominant feature of the arbour terrace
(Fig. 5). It was placed in this position to minimize
the rather overwhelming height of the stone wall
which was needed to retain the northeast corner of
the rose garden. The arbour, constructed of heart-
wood tidewater cypress, was modif ied from a design
of DuCerceau (from his drawing of the garden of
4
Jacques Androuet du Cerceau, Le premier volume des plus
excellents basiments de France, Paris, M.D. XXVI.
5
Anne Baker, Margaret H. Bailie, and after 1929, Ruth
Havey were the designers in her New York off ice who
worked on Dumbarton Oaks. structure, the major sash windows were over thirty feet high.
74
4
View of the Swimming
Pool and its surround-
ings looking West. The
rocaille work on the
enclosing walls is used in
various parts of the garden.
In bloom is Azalea indica alba
5
The Arbour. Wisteria
hangs down from the roof
and clematis is trained
around the posts
75
was more conservative in her approach to design,
whereas Mildred Bliss favoured a more f lamboyant
approach. She admired the great sweeps and smaller
excitements of baroque art and this inf luence can
be readily seen in work executed in the gardens by
Ruth Havey after Beatrix Farrands retirement in
1947. Beatrix Farrands simpler approach checked
Mrs. Blisss exuberance while never diminishing the
vitality which underlies the design of most of the
elements in the garden. Ruth Havey, on the other
hand, was closer in spirit to the exuberance exhib-
ited in the f inal design of the Garden Library
garden and the pebble garden, (Fig. 6) the latter
being the last work undertaken by Mildred Bliss at
Dumbarton Oaks and the part of the garden most
admired by the public.
THE IRONWORK
Ironwork, and ironwork together with teak or
cypress, forms a principal decorative feature of the
gardens. The gates between the various enclosures
of the formal gardens are especially noteworthy for
their combination of delicate beauty and strength
of design, and it is unfortunate that when visitors
are in the gardens all of these gates must be open in
order to encourage passage between the various
parts. The gates in their closed positions form a very
important aspect of the design by reinforcing the
character of the planting while at the same time
allowing the distant scene to become a part of the
general composition. The design of many gates is
characterized by a plant motif and this varies
considerably in intricacy and in stylization. The
more naturalistic designs are the most arresting as
they have the greatest delicacy.
In the past thirty years some of the ironwork
has deteriorated and has not been replaced and
some of the gates have disappeared. A substantial
amount remains, however, and it has recently been
restored and repainted. The ironwork, throughout
the gardens, is painted glossy black with the notable
exception of the main entry gates which are glossy
black highlighted with elaborate gold leaf. Origi-
nally these wide entry gates were wood, solid and
somewhat rustic in appearance. The change to
imposing heavy iron entry gates was a signif icant
one as it considerably altered the character of the
approach to the house, changing it from the
appearance of an arts and crafts garden sequestered
in a leafy suburb to a grander image associated in
Washington with embassies and governmental
off ices.
With the exception of the entry gates the
ironwork complements the planting and is most
noticeable when combined with teak in gates and
in the garden furniture. It is an integral part of the
garden design and provides lightness and contrast to
the heaviness of the substantial stone walls. The
designs were prepared in Beatrix Farrands off ice,
and were made into mock-ups to be approved on
the site. Because the various pieces of ironwork
were done over a span of thirty years, they repre-
sent the work of several craftsmen with varying
quality.
6
The combination iron-teak gates are of
special interest because of their strong and vigorous
designs, and because they contribute signif icantly to
the arts and crafts motif of the garden.
In addition to the ironwork there is some very
f ine work in lead, although its use is limited to the
rose garden and fountain terrace. Lead work was
commonly used in European-inspired American
gardens in the early part of this century. At
Dumbarton Oaks it is combined with stone where
it lightens the effect and offers an effective foil to
the tracery of vines and rambler roses (Fig. 7).
PLANTING
When work began in 1922, there were on the
property some f ine trees, primarily native American
oaks, many of which were integrated into the
garden scheme. In addition there were outstanding
specimens of silver maples, Japanese maples,
paulownia, katsura and beech, which Beatrix
Farrand carefully preserved and worked into the
design with success. Older large trees formed an
important part of Beatrix Farrands work and she
defended her choices,
6
Current ironwork restoration is being carried out by
Thomas Bredlow, who executed some of the f ine ironwork
in Washington Cathedral. Restoration of the garden
furniture, gates and pergolas has been undertaken by Charles
Appleton, cabinet-maker, who constructed some of the
memorial outdoor furniture at Harvard University.
76
6
The Pebble Garden,
1969. The pool basin holds a
shallow sheet of water,
intensifying the colour of
the cobbles brought from
the beaches of Mexico
77
of monumental sculpture. The large beech on the
beech terrace, the magnolias adjacent to the urn
terrace and the silver maple are examples of trees
skilfully placed to achieve a sculptural effect. Most
of the varieties used in this manner have outstand-
ing winter form and bark giving them year-round
interest.
Dumbarton Oaks is representative in many
ways of the arts and crafts movement in gardens
especially in choice of materials, choice of plants
and in a limited way choice of colour. In this latter
consideration, Beatrix Farrand was directly inf lu-
enced by Gertrude Jekyll, but also by the prefer-
ences of Mildred Bliss who considered the many
hues of white to be the essential colour of the
garden. However, the most successful use of colour
at Dumbarton Oaks is in the rose garden (Fig. 8)
which is the grand ballroom of these outdoor
enclosures. The various roses seem to me as f igures
in bright costume gracefully moving in the late
afternoon breeze. This exemplary rose garden was
planned together by Beatrix Farrand and Mildred
Bliss, and we read that
the pink and salmon colour sorts have been selected for
the south third, together with a few of the very deep red
ones, such as Etoile de Hollande and Ami Quinard. The
centre third of the garden was planted more particularly
with salmon-coloured and yellowish-pink roses, while the
northern third was given over entirely to yellow or
predominantly yellow and orange sorts. There was a wash of
colour over the garden, deepening in hue from north to
south.
[8]
The gardens were designed for winter as well,
therefore the thought behind the planting of the
rose garden has been given quite as much to the
evergreen and enduring outlines and form as to the
roses.
REPRESENTATIVE PLANTS IN THE
DUMBARTON OAKS GARDEN
Cedrus deodara Deodar cedar
Cedrus libani Cedar-of-Lebanon
Tsuga caroliniana Carolina hemlock
Magnolia grandiflora Southern magnolia
The big Paulownia tomentosa on the southeast side of
the east lawn is a tree which has often been criticized
adversely, but the magnif icent size of its trunk, its great
height, and its purple f lowers in the early summer make it
so conspicuous and splendid an object that the gawkiness of
its lower structure should be overlooked.
[7]
Her planting design is of an extraordinarily
subtle and complicated nature. She used plants as
strong design elements in themselves, but combined
them so skillfully that one experiences a pervasive
atmosphere of restfulness in all of her gardens. In
her planting designs the formalism which charac-
terized her work comes through clearly. At
Dumbarton Oaks, as one enters each garden
enclosure, the arrangement is such that one con-
templates the whole and then examines the detail.
The balanced planting within a space contributes
greatly to this sense of completeness, and yet
because plants were used as markers as well as
specimen plants, there is also a sense of progression
from one space to another.
Beatrix Farrand relied heavily on broadleaf
evergreens to form the structure of the design and
to provide strong textural interest. The hollies and
boxwoods do both, and they have enormous
versatility. The history of the use of plants was of
importance to Mildred Bliss, who not only wanted
to live on a country estate, but to have at the same
time the feeling that her garden was old and
furnished amply with historic associations. The
plants most commonly used in the design, the oaks,
the yew, the holly, and the boxwood, are the
embodiment of our deepest associations with the
older gardens of England.
In several instances trees were planted in the
European manner. The Kieffer pears at the end of
the arbour terrace were planted in the style of the
Tuscan gardens of the early Renaissance as a raised
double hedge with look-outs that frame the view
in a series of panels. Several Magnolia grandiflora
espaliered against the house are an example of an
American tree planted and maintained in the
European way. The specimen trees have had the
gardens designed around them or have been
introduced into the design to further the impression
7
Beatrix Farrands Plant Book for Dumbarton Oaks, ed. Diane
Kostial McGuire, 1980, p. 19.
8
Beatrix Farrands Plant Book, pp. 634.
78
7
Small Villa. Located in
the grounds at the head of
32nd Street. It is an example
of the attention given to
detail by Lawrence White
and Beatrix Farrand in
secondary structures and
spaces
8
Rose Garden. The view
looks west to the Orangery
79
Buxus sempervirens Common box
Buxus sempervirens Suffrutiscosa Edging box
Ilex crenata Japanese holly
Ilex opaca American holly
Acer palmatum Japanese maple
Acer saccharinum Silver maple
Cercidiphyllum japonicum Katsura tree
Cornus florida Flowering dogwood
Magnolia heptapeta Yulan magnolia
Paulownia tomentosa Karri tree
Quercus alba White oak
Quercus nigra Red oak
Quercus velutina Black oak
Sophora japonica Japanese pagoda tree
Ulmus americana American elm
Abelia grandiflora Glossy abelia
Forsythia intermedia Border forsythia
Forsythia suspensa Weeping forsythia
Jasminum nudiflorum Winter jasmine
Syringa vulgaris Common lilac
Hedera helix English ivy
Parthenocissus tricuspidata Boston ivy
Wisteria sinensis Chinese wisteria
No t e s o n Co n t r i b u t o r s
DENYS SUTTON is Editor of APOLLO and the
author of books on Derain, Rodin, Sickert and
Whistler, and the editor of Letters of Roger Fry.
GILES CONSTABLE is Director of Dumbarton
Oaks and Professor of Medieval History at Harvard.
His principal f ield is religious and institutional
history in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
Among his publications are books on monastic
tithes and medieval letters and an edition of the
letters of Peter the Venerable.
GEORGE KUBLER is Stirling Professor of the
History of Art at Yale University and a Senior
Fellow for Pre-Columbian Studies at Dumbarton
Oaks. His publications include Religious Architecture
of New Mexico, Mexican Architecture of the Sixteenth
Century, Art andArchitecture of Ancient America,
Portuguese Architecture 15211706, and The Shape of
Time. For his contributions to the art history of
Mexico, he is recipient of the Order of the Aztec
Eagle, Mexicos highest award offered to foreigners.
MARY ELLEN MILLER has been a Junior Fellow
at Dumbarton Oaks and is now Assistant Professor
in the History of Art at Yale University. In addition
to numerous articles, she is the author of Murals of
Bonampak being published by Princeton University
Press and is writing a volume on Mesoamerica for
the World of Art series of Thames and Hudson.
CYRIL MANGO was lecturer in Fine Arts at
Harvard University from 19578; Junior Fellow and
then lecturer in Byzantine Archaeology at
Dumbarton Oaks from 195163; Professor of
Modern Greek and Byzantine History at Kings
College, University of London, from 196368. He
has been the Bywater and Sotheby Professor of
Byzantine and Modern Greek at Oxford University
since 1973. He is the author of several books on
Byzantine art and history.
KURT WEITZMANN is Emeritus Professor of
Princeton University and the Institute for Ad-
vanced Study and the author of many publications,
especially on Byzantine manuscripts, ivories, and
icons. He helped to lead a joint research team to
the Monastery of St. Catherine at Mt. Sinai in the
late 1950s and early 1960s and is now preparing the
second in a series of volumes on the Sinai icons.
He is an Honorary Associate of the Center for
Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks.
AGNES MONGAN is Emeritus Curator of
Drawings and former Director of the Fogg Art
Museum at Harvard University. She has written
many catalogues of drawings exhibitions. Among
the best known of these are the catalogue of the
Ingres exhibition at the Fogg in 1967 and the
catalogue of the Tiepolo exhibition at the Fogg in
1970.
DIANE KOSTIAL McGUIRE is Advisor for the
gardens at Dumbarton Oaks and editor of Beatrix
Farrands Plant Book. She is a landscape architect
with a widely ranging practice ranging from the
preservations of historic gardens to the reclamation
of industrial sites. She is Professor of Landscape
Architecture at the University of Arkansas.
82
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1
Interior of the Music
Room, f inished in 1929.
The f ireplace is French, late
sixteenth century; the
tapestry depicts the Prince
of Malice (Tournai, late
f ifteenth century) with a
Madonna and Child by
Riemenschneider placed
below. The f loor is French
eighteenth century